4 Risky Marketing Ideas That Paid Off

In the marketing world, it often pays to take risks. But many marketers and entrepreneurs are intimidated at the idea of taking a bold action. That's reasonable cause for reluctance, especially for new businesses with limited experience or limited resources with which to fund a campaign.

However, risk-taking is vitally important if you want your marketing strategies to pay off in the long term; and countless brand examples are proof.

Why risk-taking Is important

First, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why risk taking is important in marketing in the first place:

Distinguish yourself. One of the most important considerations for any marketing campaign is how you’re going to stand out from the competition and become more visible to your customers. Without that distinction, your campaign won’t generate enough visibility or recognition to be effective. Taking a risk automatically distinguishes you -- if for no other reason than the fact that so few others have taken this risk.

Break plateaus. Taking risks also allows you to break through the plateaus of your marketing initiatives. When you rely on the same old marketing strategies, over and over, you’re going to see the same results, over and over. This is safe, and it might even give you a decent return, but it won’t allow you to live up to your full potential.

Encourage loyalty. Many marketers fear taking risks because those risks might polarize their audiences, but this polarization can actually be a good thing. You might end up alienating some portion of your audience with your risks, but the portion that remains may be much more loyal to you as a result -- and that can often be well worth the tradeoff.

Examples of Risk-taking success

Consider the following brands, which took major risks and saw some huge payoffs:

1. Domino's changes everything.

Domino's pizza pivoted hard a few years ago when it decided to change everything about its pizza -- and its image. To do this, the company completely upgraded its product line, using new ingredients and new recipes to appeal to a new crowd. More importantly, Domino's chose to criticize and even make fun of its old products, referring to its earlier crust as “cardboard.” That self-deprecating move was a bold one that really paid off for the brand

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Source: Entrepreneur