Five Marketing Strategies Your Competitors Are Missing - But You Shouldn't

Everything else being equal – and sometimes even when it's not – the key to besting your competitors is great marketing. Going head-to-head with competitors is a given, but there are often untapped marketing strategies your competitors are missing. Maybe you're missing them, too! Take advantage of them, however, and you can leap frog the competition and take their customers – and they won't even know what hit them. Five such marketing strategies are listed below. Your competition is probably missing them. Are you?

1. Sticker marketing

Affordable die-cut stickers are perfect for commanding attention from your target customer base, especially when used in clever scenarios with unique distribution. Humorous, relevant, and useful sticker marketing can be deployed anywhere your audience congregates: at the mall, in restroom stalls, on the street and just about anywhere else. The great thing is that you can get die-cut stickers – those that are cut into specific shapes so they can fit anywhere and match any theme – next to dirt cheap. Distribution is a breeze, and even free so long as you're willing to do it yourself. And chances are, your competitors have overlooked, or at least vastly underestimated, the value of affordable die-cut stickers as marketing tools. Don't make the same mistake. Instead, take advantage of their folly and turn it into a sales opportunity!

2. Newsletter marketing

In today's e-world marketers are quick to use email to send newsletters out to customers and clients. The problem is that email is not very personal, it is easy to ignore, easy to be filtered as spam, and it doesn't lend the impression that you are a reputable, professional company. At least, not in and of itself. But a comprehensive weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter mailed to customers and clients can be extremely powerful indeed. Unless you're in the financial industry, chances are you and your competitors are not sending regular newsletters. Doing so will allow you to highlight your company as professional, successful and trustworthy; and will also allow you the opportunity to showcase your customers.

3. Poster marketing

Apple has them. So does Nike. So why don't you? Well-targeted poster distribution equals powerful branding for your company. That's powerful branding your competition doesn't have. Best of all, posters are cheap to print – so there's no excuse for not playing ball like the big boys and getting your name out to the masses.

4. Booklet marketing

Booklets can be very valuable tools, not only to you as a marketer but also to your customers – which then, in turn, makes them valuable tools to you as a marketer. Print informative booklets that are relevant to your customers, fill them with valuable information your customers will want to keep on their bookshelves, and pack in a special discount promo code to earn repeat business.

5. Magnet marketing

Magnets can be printed in a variety of sizes to market your business on refrigerators, automobiles, filing cabinets and more. Add value to your magnets with information that your target audience will want to know: athletic schedules, upcoming concerts, etc. Include a discount promo code to turn branding power into direct sales.