How playing it safe with your marketing is actually holding you back
Image credit: @joshstyle
Does your marketing fail to get any meaningful engagement? Are your reports left unread and your newsletters unclicked? Honey, you may well be suffering from ‘playing it safe.’ Sticking to the same tone and format as everyone else under the belief that this is just how it’s done. And it’s this belief which is holding you back. Here’s why (and how to fix it)…
What’s ‘safe’ (and why is it shit)?
When I use the term ‘safe’ to describe marketing approaches, what I’m actually talking about is sticking to the status quo. The same tone, approach, and look as everyone else in your industry — I find corporate clients are usually the worst offenders because they don’t believe their industry has scope to be fun or disruptive. And that’s simply not true (but we’ll get to that in a bit).
This is the issue you’re going to run up against when sticking to the same style as everyone else — shocker — people have seen it all before. They’re bombarded with marketing and corporate comms all day, every day. After a while, it all fades into the background as white noise. Unless you’re doing or offering something different, you’ll be no exception.
Moreover, sticking to the same guidelines as everyone else lowkey gives the impression that you aren’t innovative. Aren’t original thinkers. Don’t want to put in the effort. Be honest — would you read that shit if you didn’t have to? I doubt it, babes.
So, what can we do to fix it?
How to step away from ‘safe’ in your own way
Before I start, a big shout out to Jodie Newman from The Business Allotment, who formalised this and delivered it in a talk at a Cowork Crew session in London earlier this year. Although the following points are based on my long and widely publicised (by me) history in copywriting and marketing, I can’t ignore the overlap. Plus, I wanna give her a shout out because damn, she rocks.
1.Look at the format and context of the marketing
Let’s start simply. What are you writing? Is it an email? A report? A handout? Next, how do you intend to use it? These two factors already give you a foundation to play on. It’s also helpful to look at what everyone else in your industry is doing when it comes to these particular formats or contexts, so you can establish a ‘safety’ baseline.
2. Reverse engineer the messaging
All too often, I see brands or businesses pushing forward with the message THEY want to deliver. But, hun — it’s not about you or what you want. It’s about the customer/client/reader. You need to take your agenda and honestly ask yourself what’s in it for the customer. What’s the benefit to them? Once you’ve got the benefit, context, and format, you can start playing around.
3. Get creative
Jodie recommends pulling all the elements above into a table or matrix, so it’s easier for you to see how this piece of marketing can stand out: format, context, and messaging.
Make a list under each column of all the ways you could zig while everyone else is zagging. For some more corporate businesses, this may simply be a case (as it so often is for my clients) of talking in a more casual, colloquial way in the face of corporate jargon. You may even find that something as simple as a jazzy leaflet fold does the trick. Could the main hook of your messaging be more provocative, or would switching to a direct quote or a statistic do the trick?
Long story short, getting jazzy with your marketing doesn’t have to involve a wild Liquid Death-style stunt. Just slightly stepping outside the lines of convention could be all it takes to get you the engagement you’re looking for. And, hey — if this all sounds a bit much, I know an excellent marketer and writer who could help 👀