If you’re passionate about typically popular issues, such as music, sport or film, then it can be absolutely heart-breaking to be faced with the task of marketing and writing about things like insurance, or financial services. But why does it have to be? Can’t you find a way to combine the things you love with, well, the things everyone else loves? Think about it. If you find creating a voice for your own products and services pretty dull, it doesn’t matter how essential they are, the chances are that everyone else will find reading about them dull, too.

So just how should you incorporate exciting content marketing into your existing strategies? For those who have always dealt with the traditional ‘sell, sell, sell’ methods of blandness, it can be difficult to change tactics. Shying away from directly marketing your brand can seem risky, especially when you start thinking along the lines of ‘what’s this got to do with anything?’. But ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a tedious piece of content go viral?

If you’re struggling for ideas, try and think of ways that you can make your business relevant to a particular trend, community or niche. The key point here is of course relevance – anything else will look desperate and spammy, and you risk isolating yourself even further. So, the cleverer you can be about your brand the easier this will be.

The more mundane the industry you are in, surprisingly, the more you can potentially use this to your advantage. In not being ‘boxed in’, you can allow yourself to be creative in your approach. First and foremost, your customers are people. Once you have a grasp on what they enjoy, what they’re sharing, and what interests them, that’s when you can really tap into approaching them properly. Give your brand a voice, and find a way of using it to approach your audience – which may include sectors not even in your niche. If you can make your brand relevant to a particularly exciting target group, then you may well have struck gold.

Which Brands Are Dull?

If you look at the following reputation survey, you can easily see the offenders – those industries which people have the least confidence in, the ones perceived to be out of touch with their demographic. They also tend to be the ones people are least inspired by. Perhaps it’s time companies in these sectors got creative? In actual fact, you might even find there’s no such thing is a boring industry – just a boring marketer.

It Doesn’t Just Have To Be Writing

As you can see above, the airline industry isn’t exactly one which has been particularly well received by the public in recent years. However, in December 2013, America’s WestJet Airlines went against the grain and produced some heart-warming content in the form of a video, which went instantly viral. Timing their Christmas miracle with the holiday spirit which was so prominent at the time, they took into consideration a number of factors including timing, personal elements and making their brand voice loud and clear. Combining the ‘real-time’ nature of today’s society with a sweet gimmick grabbed the media’s attention and projected a positive image of the organization. After watching the video, it is plain to see that they wanted to be recognized as the giving types, who genuinely care about their customers – and it seemed to work.

The Four Cs….

Creative, Consistent, Conversational… and Crazy? Whilst creativity and consistency are an absolute must, a certain aspect of craziness could help, too. Whilst anything too ‘out there’ would contradict the notion of consistency, it certainly doesn’t hurt to allow your brand to stand out. Whether you’re pitching an idea for a blog, approaching your audience with a PR stunt, or simply sharing something you think your social media followers might enjoy or benefit from, thinking outside of the box will almost definitely win you a load of brownie points.

Remember, you want to spark conversation, so first and foremost, think of yourself as a person. Whether you don’t feel like it half the time because you’re being driven up the wall with campaigns is another matter, but in bridging the gaps between industries you will really start to notice increased engagement – and hopefully a bigger return.