Breakthrough Marketing: How The Magic Happens

Oki Bin Oki

3 weeks ago

For a lot of businesses, marketing just feels like a slow grind. No matter how much time or energy they dedicate to it, they just can’t move the needle as much as they’d like.

That’s where breakthrough marketing efforts come into the picture. All the best businesses and companies use these when they want to really start performing and go to the next level.

But what constitutes a proper breakthrough method? What’s the right approach?

That’s what we run through in this guide. By the end, you should have a better understanding of what you need to do:

Breakthrough 1: Rapid Iteration

One of the things that a lot of these top companies do is focus on speed of iteration. They’re more interested in just launching and getting things done than they are with everything being perfect (which is what a lot of businesses wait for). Having an MVP out there is already marketing in itself and starts to generate its own sales. It can always be improved and refined later.

Interestingly, the market rewards scrappy and fast products more than those that take years. Just look at video games or new services. It’s not always the polish that consumers want, but whatever value they can access immediately.

Breakthrough 2: Being Willing To Look Stupid

You often see marketing and business success gurus talking about the value of “being able to look stupid” or “have no shame.” This advice isn’t just idle words. It actually makes a lot of sense in the context of business and human relationships in general. When you have no fear like this, you’re much more likely to “fail forward” as the expression goes.

Think about what brands like Old Spice did. They said things like “your man could smell like this.” It was certainly high-risk and something that broke the mold. But it was also the sort of thing that raised eyebrows and genuinely got people interested. Now Old Spice is one of the most coveted brands in the male toiletries space out there. And it’s all thanks to a simple ad.

Breakthrough 3: Focus On A Single Metric

Another way to break through is to focus on a single metric in your marketing. Focusing on just one thing reduces dilution, which can be a problem in some companies.

For example, let’s say your current marketing campaign has about five metrics you’re targeting. If you can reduce this to one, you’ll know whether you’ve succeeded.

For example, let’s say you’re a company that sells to students on college campuses. If you can commit to getting 200 users per college, you can ignore other statistics, like your CAC or LTV.

This singular focus is often what’s needed if your marketing is stagnating and you’re not moving forward the way you want. It sounds extreme, and it is, but it also allows you to think a bit more outside the box and develop inventive strategies.

Breakthrough 4: Create Polarization

Creating deliberate polarization is one of the riskiest strategies in today’s market, but also among the most rewarding. It taps into fundamental human psychological drives and emotions, and can even cause you to lose some customers. The idea, though, is that you make more money overall.

For example, let’s say it’s your Black Friday sale and you say something like “don’t buy this TV.” To many customers, it’ll sound absurd. Why would a company behave like this? But to others, it will look like the ultimate power move. Any company that’s willing to tell people not to buy what it sells obviously has something incredible to offer that’s just not available anywhere else.

Breakthrough 5: Use AI Marketing

Using AI marketing is another way to break through. Teaming up with an AI SEO agency and getting them to supercharge your progress with the help of artificial intelligence is often the way to go.

This strategy works because AI usually approaches marketing tasks differently from human teams. It’s able to find the patterns that work and stick with them without the same level of trial and error.

What’s more, you can do so much more of it. Whenever you use people, you’re highly constrained by what your budget will allow. But when AI is in the picture, scaling is far more straightforward and easy to achieve.

Breakthrough 6: Hijack Culture

Cultural hijacking is another approach you want to take. All the best marketing leverages it .

The idea here is to surf the existing culture. If there’s a way to connect your brand to the topics and subjects that are on your audience’s minds right now, then go for it. It can be one of the most effective ways to get noticed on social media and really start making a lot of progress quickly. You’re more likely to get likes and shares, and the algorithm will learn you produce content that people actually care about.

Breakthrough 7: Be Simple

Perhaps the problem in your business isn’t that your marketing isn’t clever enough, it’s that it’s too complicated. Sometimes, going for simplicity can make all the difference in the world.

For example, think about Mailchimp’s one-liner: “send better emails.” Everyone knows what it means, how it relates to the developer’s business and how they can benefit, and yet it’s only three short words.

Breakthrough 8: Borrow Credibility

If you think credibility is an issue for your brand, you might also get a breakthrough by borrowing it from another. If you can latch onto someone else’s that’s been built up over a long period, you will often find you get results pretty quickly.

For example, suppose you’re a car company like Tesla and you want people to think your brand is great. What do you do? You start by offering free charging stations to Tesla owners across the country so they can get around without spending any money. Obviously, that sort of situation can’t last, but it has a massive effect on how people perceive a brand long-term. Even today, Tesla is still benefiting from that stunt.