Looking for some inspiration for your next marketing plan? Want to find some creative marketing ideas that will make your business stand out from the crowd? Do you sell products on Amazon and want to find new ways to bring people to your pages? External marketing that brings traffic and conversions is often favourable by selling sites, especially Amazon, and strengthens your brand’s relevancy. So what sort of things can you do? We’ve delved into the brains of our Brand Monkey marketing experts – here’s what they had to offer.

Creative Marketing Ideas for Social Media

1. Plug your social media handles

We can often feel a bit apprehensive about sharing social media profiles. It feels awkward and can come across as pushy. But that’s where you’ll find the majority of your target markets nowadays. Whether you use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube – or whatever the latest one is that’s popped up (is Threads still happening?) – pop your logo and social handles on everything. Add it to business cards, product labels, slideshows, letter headings, or at the bottom of your emails. It will improve your discoverability, potentially boost followers and is a great way to show the brand’s personality and offer user-generated content opportunities.

2. Use Instagram Stories

Our Instagram feeds are often a place of well-crafted perfection. But Instagram stories are somewhere for you to be real. These 24-hour snippets into your business can allow you to show some spontaneity. You could share your most recent posts, or why not go behind the scenes and show you or your team? What do you do day-to-day? How about using them to tease new products or a competition? It doesn’t even have to be related to your business. There’s an unwritten 80:20 rule for social media posting. Only 20% of your posts should be directly sales-related, whilst the remaining 80% of your posts should be other things, even if it’s indirectly selling. For example, have you got any pets that join you at work? Animals are always a winner for engagement.

3. Join in with daily hashtag themes

Each day of the week often has a popular hashtag related to it, for example, #throwbackthursday, #smallbusinesssaturday and #motivationmonday to name a few. These are often most popular on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. You could join in with those to improve your reach. Have a search and see if there are any you can directly relate to your business. For example, if you sell items in the wedding industry, you might consider joining in with #weddingwednesday.

4. Check the competition

You should be aware of who your direct competitors are and what social media channels they’re using. It’s a great place to see what they’re up to and analyse their posts. When are they posting them? Which posts are popular or have gained lots of likes and interaction? Use them as inspiration for your own creative marketing ideas.

5. Run a Contest

Running a competition or contest on social media is a great way to get interaction, new followers and improve your business visibility. You can ask people to like, share, comment or tag other users in your competition post to massively increase visibility. People can get a bit nervous about having to do too much to enter a competition, but you can always say, ‘For an extra entry, share this post to your story’, or, ‘Tag a friend for an extra entry’.

Photo competitions are often very popular, particularly if they’re unusual or comedic. Video contests are also good, though can be harder to get as many entries as they require more effort from customers. That being said, both photos and videos provide businesses with lots of user-generated content for your brand. Add a personalised hashtag along with it that must be included. This will improve your reach even more.

A great example is from Dear Evan Hansen on TikTok. People had to film themselves singing a song from the show and post it with the hashtag #YouWillBeFound for a chance to get an audition for the show. Although it’s not technically selling a product, it did increase visibility substantially for the show as it’s about to embark on a new UK tour, ultimately increasing ticket sales. The campaign ended up on National television because it was so popular!

@itvnews

Directors turn to TikTok to cast ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ talent, as @Hannah Lowther explains #itvnews #tiktok #theatre #dearevanhansen

♬ original sound - itvnews

Other competition ideas include voting contests. These are easy for customers to engage with, which will improve the number of entries. If people can enter a competition with one click of a button, they’re more likely to do it. You can also then use any data for future research or use it in blog posts.

Whatever contest you decide to run, make sure you promote it on all your social media accounts and to your newsletter subscriber list if you have one. Be shameless!

6. Encourage commenting

Posts that get people commenting and engaging beyond just likes are usually boosted higher by social media algorithms. They want people to build relationships with each other and get talking, so a post that actively encourages people to comment is a great idea. Ask your followers a question or why not try a caption contest? Post a photo and say, ‘Caption this’. There doesn’t even need to be a prize – people often just like validation. Also, make sure you respond to each comment you get. Not only does it boost your engagement and visibility, it also shows your followers that you’re actually interested and engaged with them. Plus it proves you’re not just a robot!

7. Use influencers

Not everyone likes them, but influencers are here to stay! Why not consider striking up a deal? Research into influencers that reach your target market and see if they have similar ideals to your business. They can promote your product to their audience and ultimately increase your brand visibility and potential sales. Influencers have a reach beyond yours.

Top tip: Look for engagement with the content they post. You’re looking for anywhere between 5%-10% of the view count or likes to audience/followers.

Other creative marketing ideas

8. Newsletters

If you have a list of email subscribers, don’t forget about them! Send them a newsletter or even an email every so often. It can feel like a bit of a slog, especially as we know brand newsletters can end up in the bin, in spam or unread 75% of the time. But if just one of those customers makes a purchase, it’s worth it. Emailing once a month is fine. At least they’ll know you still exist! You could give them updates about products, offer them exclusive discount codes for being part of the subscriber list, or ask for feedback on certain things. You have a list of existing customers there who could be returning ones if you pop up at the right time. We work a lot with Klaviyo and spend significant amounts of time building audiences, segments and flows to ensure each campaign sent is highly targeted. Sending emails today is an art form. Great detail must be taken to execute a winning campaign!

9. Add visuals to all your content

People switch off when they see a wall of text. It’s a given. It’s not just social media that needs visuals – it’s your newsletters, your website and your blogs. Add a visual element to ALL of your content. That could be images or videos. It helps break up text and will likely slow down the exponential scrollers amongst us.

10. Use infographics

This is a great way to catch the scrollers. Having information disguised within an image helps you get across the USPs, important facts and figures in a quick, easy-to-read way. They’re great for sharing online and look particularly great on websites and blogs. We often use them for images on Amazon listings to get across key points quickly.

It may sound daunting, but creating infographics doesn’t have to be difficult. There are plenty of templates you can use online to get you started. Canva is a great place to find the right template for you, and really easy to use.

11. Graphs and Charts

Boring! Yes, these are often considered business-plan-only content, but graphs and charts are simple, effective ways to get across key information on websites or social posts. A classic pie chart, block or line graph is often better for visual learners and is another way to break up that wall of text. They’re also super easy to make. Those maths lessons have come in handy after all!

12. Make videos

Video marketing has become one of the most popular forms of content marketing in recent years. It’s favoured by search engines nowadays, especially on Amazon, so jump on the trend as soon as possible. You don’t need to have high-end camera equipment to get creative. Phone cameras are such high-quality nowadays with editing apps just a minute’s download away. You can edit using something like Youcut or Capcut for a better finish, or edit directly in social media apps if that’s where you plan on posting your videos.

Top tip: Often social media app algorithms favour those who create the entire content in their app rather than uploading a pre-made video.

Content-wise for videos, you could try the following:

• Promote your product like an advert (30 seconds – 1 minute)
• Behind-the-scenes content (up to 2 minutes)
• Inspiration on how to use your product (30-40 seconds)
• A live video on social media of you demonstrating a product (long-form video – 5+ minutes)

The length of your video should depend on where you’re planning to post it. Shorter videos tend to do better with engagement as attention spans are shorter, but if you’re looking at a live video demonstrating a product, or posting to YouTube, often longer videos are more effective. Check out what sort of videos do well with your competition. For example, ASMR videos are extremely popular, and those videos can be at least 30 minutes long!

Blog Ideas

If you’ve hit a wall, here are some blog ideas to get your brains whirring.

13. Use statistics

Find interesting statistics that are related to your business. Blogs don’t need to be long, just informative. Readers like coming away knowing more than what they arrived with. You can turn those into infographics, great for using on social media posts when sharing your blog. It might even spark further blog ideas.

14. Make future predictions

Could you be the one to start a new trend? Do some research and make some predictions about future trends in your industry. You will need some facts, figures or sources to back up any direct claims you make, but it gives you a chance to offer your opinion on the way things are going.

15. Tackle controversy

Now we don’t mean create it! If something controversial has arisen in your industry or field of expertise, you could write a blog post weighing in on it and offering your opinion. It shows you’re aware of what’s going on around you and not ignoring it, plus it puts you at the heart of what’s trending. Be prepared though. Tackling such topics can result in backlash.

16. Comparison blogs

These are a great idea for creating an informative and professional blog. You could compare the products you offer, for example, Jackanapes offer a series of hot sauces that are each good for different recipes based on their flavours and spice levels. They’d be great for creating a comparison blog or infographic. You could compare products you don’t actually sell but would use alongside your product. For example, you might sell hair gels and sprays but not hairbrushes. You could then do a blog comparing different brushes and what they’re best for. This is also a good way to get other brands involved in your business who could then share your content and potentially lead to sponsorship deals.

Of course, you could compare your products to competitors, but it can get a bit risky. You need to make sure you’re being fair. You don’t want to appear nasty or smug. Remain professional and honest and you’re more likely to gain customer’s respect and potential sales.

17. Interview industry experts

Interviews make excellent blog posts. Yes, it does take a little more time and planning, but the payoff can be great. Not only do you have quality content you get to share, but the person you’ve interviewed can also share it with their followers. This improves your reach potential and brand awareness.

As an alternative to an interview, you could have a guest blog post. It’s good to try and edit it to fit your brand voice, but if they’re done right, guest posts can be extremely lucrative. Alternatively, you could do a guest blog post for someone else. For example, if you’re in the wedding industry, you might offer to write a blog for a popular wedding guide or magazine. This plants you in the reader’s eye as an expert in your field. Of course, either way, the guest writer gets to have back-links to their website, but getting your brand seen by a new audience is even more valuable.

18. Make a list

Readers love lists. We even called this blog ’20 creative marketing ideas to make your business stand out’. Why? Because we know people like to know what they’re getting. It doesn’t have to be a huge number. You don’t have to have a higher number than your competitor. But creating a ‘top ten’ blog is a great way to hook readers in.

19. Google keywords

Think about what search terms people might use when looking for a product like yours and type them into Google. It’s a great way to get content ideas for blogs. The suggestions and related search terms that pop up provide a wealth of blog topics and titles that could be useful. You might be surprised by what you see, but if it’s there, people are searching for it. It will improve your SEO and potential reach by using popular keywords.

20. Check out other blog content online

People often think it’s frowned upon to use other’s content. But it’s not stealing as long as you’re putting your own stamp on it. You can’t just copy and paste and think your job is done. For example, there are plenty of blogs out there that discuss creative marketing ideas. We did our research, teamed it with our own knowledge and opinions, and created this list of marketing ideas to help businesses like yours. It’s the points we think are most useful in a short, snappy way. If in doubt, play it safe, but always give credit where it’s due.

So there we have it! 20 creative marketing ideas to make your business stand out. If you’ve found something useful here, let us know, or head to our blog to check out our other great tips and tricks for building your brand.