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Three Cheers for Marketing Innovation

Guest post by: Rebel Brown

Article Overview: I love great marketing. I especially love great marketing that shows Zero Gravity thinking - mapping innovative value to real-time buyer needs. After all, the formula for business growth doesn't have to be difficult. It's really quite simple.

Three Cheers for Marketing Innovation

I love great marketing. I especially love great marketing that shows Zero Gravity thinking - mapping innovative value to real-time buyer needs. After all, the formula for business growth doesn't have to be difficult. It's really quite simple.

When we provide distinct value that our buyers need (to solve a problem or improve their world) - our business will grow.

Here, here to businesses who are following that simple formula in today's world. For example:

Best Buy has always been one of my favorite Zero Gravity businesses. I've written about their innovation before.

Now they have a new program that is just too cool. Best Buy is offering to Future_Proof their buyers' technology purchases. what a GREAT idea. We all know that technoogy moves faster and faster. That laptop we bought last year is ancient history, and phones change on a weekly basis.

Best Buy has an answer. Their new Buy Back program protects your technology purchases. For a few dollars, you purchase the Buy Back program when you buy technology at Best Buy (including TVs, phones, laptops, netbooks and more). When it gets a bit aged (say in a year) you can bring it back and get a Buy Back discount from Best Buy - applied to an upgrade. And don't think they're giving you peanuts. Best Buy's published valuations are pretty darned fair. What a great marketing idea that offers real value to technology buyers - and solves a problem we all experience.

Nationwide Insurance has a new offer that really got me smiling. It's called their Vanishing Deductible program. It's simple brilliance. Here's how it works. Sign up for the auto insurance program, and Nationwide will automatically reduce your deductible by $100. Then, for every year that you drive safely, without a claim, they'll continue to reduce your deductible by $100. For someone like me, who hasn't had a claim in 10 years, this program is enough to make me look at a new insurance carrier. For that day when something does happen. After all, I should get some kind of reward for safe driving - and the discounts my current insurance provider offers don't shine a candle to the "what if" message of Nationwide. Even though it is a future/potential saving - it surely makes you think, now doesn't it?

Both of these businesses are appealing to our frugality in the new economy. After all, frugal is the new black. But these programs also offer real value to buyers - value that is compelling to their markets, and that shows these businesses understand and care about their buyers. Simple genius!

The third cheer goes to Red Baron pizza. If you want a commodity market, pizza has to be it! And there are huge market leaders out there. Yet relatively small Red Baron just introduced a simple little packaging shift that I personally find to be marketing at its finest.

We all know we eat on the run. Our kids eat on the run - if they eat at all. Enter Red Baron's frozen pizza by the slice. Fresh from the microwave and proclaimed to be as good as a pie from the local pizzeria. Red Baron has also packaged individual deep dish pizzas.They offer a variety of toppings to match any tastebud on the go.

We can argue the healthiness, or lack of, about pizza. And we can debate the goodness of frozen pizza. But let's also admit it - anything you can get a kid to eat is better than nothing. Being able to throw a single slice in the microwave and hand it to them on their way out the door has to be a big value to lots of family buyers. Red Baron mapped their product packaging to that very value and the needs of their most prominent markets - families on the go.

Hats off to these Zero Gravity businesses - focused on providing the value today's buyers need. That's how businesses grow - in any economy! Now, where's my pizza.....

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Article Tags: business growth, great marketing, marketing innovation, rebel brown, zero gravity



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