How to transform your core audience into extra special V.I.P.s

Letting people in on a secret is one way to add value to those who care most about you, your company and your brand.

Earlier this week, I went to meet Rohit Bhargava at a signing for his book, Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get It Back.

In his book, Rohit lists 10 new styles of marketing with details on how each strategy is defined, why it works, when it should be used, who’s already doing it and a step-by-step guide to how it’s done.

The 10 New Styles of Marketing Rohit identifies in Personality Not Included are:

• Curiousity Marketing – Engaging consumers by inspiring their curiousity
• Karmic Marketing – Doing something good without any expectation of reward
• Participation Marketing – Participating in a dialogue without needing to lead it
• Un-Whatever Marketing – Positioning your brand or product as the opposite of everything else
• Sensory Marketing – Using the underutilized senses to promote your business
• Antimarketer Marketing – Making fun of marketing or business to position your brand/product above it
• Fallibility Marketing – Turning mistakes into moments to demonstrate your personality
• Insider Marketing – Giving consumers special access to inside information or experiences
• Incidental Marketing – Taking a small incidental element of your business and marketing it
  Useful Marketing – Creating content that has value and using it for marketing

To illustrate that he can follow his own advice, he let those in attendance in on his own process and journey to becoming a published author. But, he also shared some easy to overlook details that readers might otherwise miss, as a means of engaging in a little Insider Marketing with some of the most interested members of his audience.

The back of the title page with all the generic legal copyright language and the ISBN number is the one page in any book that possesses the least amount of personality.

To infuse the boring title page with something unique, and share something special with his readers, the fine print lists a Web address people can visit for an alternate introduction to the book.

Those who may be interested to see for themselves can visit www.personalitynotincluded.com/alternateintro.

The reasons Insider Marketing works, according to Rohit, are:

• It makes customers feel important and trusted
• It raises the chances that the customers will respond to it as it is not a “mass” message.
• It is inherently talkable, as people love to share stories of special treatment or access with others.

Since I’ve just let you in on the secret, you’re an insider, too. See how that works?

Now: Will you click on the link? Will you pass it along to others? Will you buy the book? I’m glad I did.

Tagged as: branding, communications, marketing