Marketing Your Consulting Services.pdf - epiheirimatikotita.gr

8. Incubate
Remember all those times that your English composition teachers encouraged you
to complete your assignments early so that you could “put them on the back
burner”? Well, improving the product by allowing creativity to enter the process is
one of the reasons. When creating something new, the results will improve in most
instances if you start the project and then set it aside to allow the creative juices in
your brain to gurgle and bubble, to splash and splutter about. What happens? Your
subconscious gets involved; your teachers were allowing time for that to occur.
How do you implement this technique? Do your marketing planning early.
Whether it is the entire plan or just one idea of the plan. Gather your data, define
your idea, and design it as best you can. Now let it sit. Let it simmer on that “back
burner.” Go do something else. Think about a different problem. Take a couple
days away from your plan. Uh uhh! No peeking!
You should sleep on it, though. And if you awaken in the middle of the night
with new ideas, capture them. If you do not, you will most likely forget them by
morning. So sleep with a pencil and paper (and maybe a flashlight) next to your
bed. What’s going on? Your conscious mind can focus on only one idea at a time.
Your subconscious, however, can tap into everything that has ever happened to
you at the same time. This is mega-combine technique! Sleep allows your mind to
wander about and connect ideas in your brain to each other.
The 3M Company encourages employees to create new ideas. No, they don’t
allow employees to sleep at work. They do, however, encourage them to spend time
on the job thinking of and creating new products for the company.
Your Challenge Remember the weekend when you were supposed to “visit another
place” to generate two dozen marketing ideas? Examine those ideas now. Take
one or two that you think have the most potential. Gather your data, define your
idea, and design it as best you can. Then put it away for a couple of days. Let it incubate
so that your subconscious can hatch another great idea.
9. Trigger Concepts
This technique is really powerful! Or maybe I think it is because I have used it for
so long and have fantastic results. It is easy to personalize, and that also makes it a
powerful creativity technique.
Marketing: Can It Be Fun? 233