I’m the owner of a small e-commerce site and, of course, I’m hungry for more sales. Since I don’t have enough budget to pay a professional digital marketing agency – and much less the skyrocket fees of a growth hacking consultant – I follow a DIY approach.
I read digital marketing blogs, participating in marketing events, and try to keep myself updated about the latest trends and strategies on Quora and forum websites. If you do the same, you surely have noticed that the strategy and advice presented in these various sources repeat themselves. I must admit that I have always thought that the more people support a marketing strategy, the more likely is this to work. But disappointed about the little results achieved during the years, I have been reading and lately adopted the mountain gorilla marketing principle.
The principle was developed by Roberto Liccardo, founder of the PR and Marketing company GoodNoon. The idea behind it is that many methods of marketing eventually stop working because everyone has flocked to it and customers (in this case our resources) have seen it too many times and are no longer interested. Instead of fighting for the leftovers, you move to somewhere new. That imitate the behavior of Mountain Gorillas from which the principle takes its name. Mountain Gorillas, unlike other animals, are not territorial; instead of fighting for limited resources, they will move and find somewhere new.
Here are three ways in which applying and using this principle in your own business will stimulate its growth.
1. It forces you to be innovative
If we’re being honest, most businesses are just following the leader. We look up to those who are striding out ahead of the flock and try to do as they do. But, when you use the mountain gorilla marketing principle in your own business, you have to be a business leader. You look for new opportunities and are willing to experiment with new marketing methods to see what sticks. As reported in Entrepreneur “Rather than slide into the busy fourth quarter with the same old marketing bag of tricks, you can get a jump on your competitors by embracing new tactics for increasing leads and sales”.
2. You won’t waste money on marketing that no longer works
All too often when a business sees a drop-in performance of an ad that once gave them a great ROI (return-on-investment) their first reaction is to do one of two things. The first is to throw more money at it and close their profit margin in a desperate plea to see similar returns, and the second you can read about in point three.
If you use mountain gorilla marketing, you won’t continue to throw money at something when it fails to offer you the returns you’re looking for. Instead, you’ll try something completely new and innovative within that platform or move to try something new.
3. You won’t pull your hair out about algorithms – you’ll find what works
The second reaction people have when a marketing avenue stops working is to throw up their hands and say, “they’ve changed the algorithm – that’s why it no longer works.”
While an algorithm change can cause a sudden and major change in your analytics, it’s not always the answer. Display ads (the type is shown at the side of blog posts) were once an incredibly profitable way to monetize a website, but nowadays that’s no longer the case. Why? Is it because Google changed the way they chose who to show your ad to?
No – the answer is that we (the customer or resource) have become numb to these efforts. Now, the advert has to be pretty spectacular to grab our attention. Those adverts are those who are stepping away from what’s been overtone and toward something, customers will take note of.
