Why disruptive marketing is innovative thinking

Being disruptive is more of a strategic direction rather than a marketing activity, so plan well.

In today's dynamic world, technology, products and services are fast-evolving and the customer is not only spoilt for choice but also fatigued because of the communication clutter. Grabbing a mind share in this scenario is a major challenge for any marketer. Disruptive marketing helps increase the chances of being noticed and enables customer engagement and better recall.
As the name suggests, disruptive marketing means breaking apart or moving away from the normal and creating the unexpected. Chances are if you are still reading this article, the disruptive headline has already worked in engaging you and substantiating the effectiveness of disruptive marketing.
Being disruptive is more of a strategic direction rather than a marketing activity. While traditional marketing focuses on existing products, disruptive marketing focuses on creating new products or modifying existing products to fill the gap between available products and customer desires. Once the product or service is developed, complementing disruptive sales techniques and disruptive advertising campaigns can be developed.
Often, disruptive marketing is a result of necessity rather than choice as new or smaller players cannot match up to the spending power of established players and therefore need to look at innovative and disruptive models to draw customer attention. The starting point though remains the product which needs to be derived from understanding the customers and knowing what they want.
Disruptive marketing is dynamic marketing. Changing strategies periodically and staying ahead of competition is the name of the game. To lead market disruption, a company must be ready to make infrastructural and technological changes. When PCs were ruling the roost, touch-enabled tablets by Apple allowed for a lot to be done "on the go" appealing to the highly mobile audience. The disruption that followed is history. Apple's mastery of disruptive marketing even makes self-disruption work for them.
Cross-categories leaders in disruption have come out winners. Digital cameras and Internet decimated the picture printing and resulted in an undisputed market leader in this category - being left with no category to cater to as they did not do enough to adapt their product to the new technology and consumer thinking. Concept of sharing images online replaced taking expensive prints.
In most cases, a lot of established industries were effected due to innovative use of unrelated technology that captured the imagination of the customers, awakening a latent desire thereby creating a new category and disrupting the market.   
Disruptive marketing can be a match winner for the brand is some simple points are taken care of:
 
Do's
. Ensure all stake holders are in agreement with the plan and proposed result
. Approach the activity with conviction and the will to take it though
. Ensure management buy in on disruptive policy as a whole
. Be a leader in disruptive marketing rather than being reactive to the competitors
. Considering the rapid changes in business environment and technology, make disruptive technology a preferred tool
. Connect with their customers at all times and know what they truly want
 
Dont's
. Ignore competition. Always have an eye on them and their activities and plan regularly on staying a step ahead
. Restrict your analysis of the business model to within your industry and known competitions. Draw inspiration from similar size companies or activities form other categories
. Undermine the use of technology. Remember an unrelated technology like internet wiped out a giant like Kodak by killing the printing business
. Restrict yourself to think within defined parameters. Learn to think beyond self-defined boundaries like categories, competition, markets, etc.
. Be inclined towards running a negative campaign or using topics that may hurt sentiments. Though this is a very good way of getting noticed, why bank on a negative feeling when the same can be done through positive experience and messages
 
Disruptive marketing is innovative thinking and this has no boundaries.
As George Bernard Shaw once famously said, "You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'"
The writer is general manager at Watermark Marketing Management. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.