Sneaky Marketing Tactics That Boost Long-Term Business Success
A lot of businesses focus on short-term marketing to get leads. They spend thousands of dollars on things like cold calls, or they use paid ads.
But these methods aren’t always the best way to build a long-term brand that people just keep wanting to come back to. While they can make people buy on the spot, they’re much less effective than methods that ensure that you’re always top of mind in the eyes of consumers.
But what, specifically, should you be doing?
Let’s take a look.
Storytelling For Emotion
These days, a lot of brands are using storytelling, not because they’re interested in narratives, but because their customers love them. Companies began telling stories years ago by saying how they were better than the other service down the street. However, with the rise of the internet and long-form content, these identities and narratives can be far more in-depth than ever before, leading to all sorts of new possibilities.
Storytelling for brands works because it humanizes them. It also enables customers to create positive associations with them, generating loyalty and trust over time.
For example, brands historically focused on features. However, storytelling brands look for how to incorporate their benefits into a wide narrative that customers will love.
Personalization Through Data
Another sneaky tactic being used by top brands is personalization through data. The idea here is to change the customer experience based on what’s known about them.
When you think about it, this makes sense. You want to meet customers where they’re at. Brick-and-mortar businesses have been doing this for years, but it is only recently that it has become possible in impersonal online spaces. Now your brand really can learn about its customers and collect sufficient information on them to ensure that they get what they need.
Netflix is a great example of this. Its recommendation engine means that even an average person can experience fantastic results from their viewing experience. All you need to do is think about how you might use data in a similar way in your business and bring it up to speed.
Link Building
If you want something that is literally going to give your marketing a boost forever, then link building is where you should start. Building links is among the most powerful methods to gain traction out there.
What’s nice about links is how scalable they are these days. You can literally just buy the links you need from reputable agencies, and they will place them on sites with a domain authority of your choosing.
Link building is also something that you can target to your customers. You can place links inside the types of blogs that they’d like to read, again, increasing your visibility and encouraging higher CTRs.
Scarcity And Exclusivity
Scarcity and exclusivity are two additional sneaky marketing tactics you might want to use. Again, these are one-time offers, but they encourage people to take action immediately instead of constantly pushing their purchase decisions into the future.
Scarcity is a useful strategy because it increases the feeling that the customer is going to miss out. Psychologically, they can put it off if they think they will experience the same benefits in the future. But if you tell them that they only have a limited time to enjoy your offer, that’s something that can really affect them and make them want to buy.
Exclusivity is similar. However, it works by making customers feel special when they can access something, enhancing the positive upside of the offer. If you can get the scarcity elements right, you put yourself in a far better position to thrive as a company.
Micro-Commitments
Brands are also using micro-commitments as an under-the-table tactic to make their companies more marketable. The idea of these is to build trust with customers in subtle ways that really matter to them.
The classic sway to do this was with free trials. However, it can work in any business. For example, an estate agent can show up for a viewing exactly at the time that they plan with the client. Or they can provide an additional, unscheduled convenience service to show goodwill.
These little changes don’t seem like a lot, but they can really add up. Many of the most successful brands operate by getting this right. Remember Apple unboxings? Exactly!
UGC Social Proof
User-generated content (UGC) as social proof is another powerful tactic that can get businesses to go a long way. When customers see that a peer enjoyed your services, it is the sort of thing that makes them believe that they will, too.
UGC social proof is something that a lot of brands are still skipping on, so it is the sort of thing that could potentially enable you to get ahead of the competition quickly. It is also evergreen, meaning that it lasts for a long time and can apply to the same products for years. Someone reviewing your services in 2025 is likely to provide additional juice to the algorithm until 2030 and perhaps beyond.
The Power of Free Value
Finally, you could look into providing people with free value, something that a lot of the most successful businesses of the last five years have been doing. The idea is to give people free content and materials to create a sense of reciprocity. Then, when they’re ready, you ask for something, like signing up for a course or buying a book.
The reason this tactic works is because it makes people feel like they are in debt. When you provide them with a lot of value upfront, they feel like they need to give something back.
This makes sense if you think about any content creator you’ve loved in the past. You might have consumed a lot of their content but never paid them anything for the value that they gave you. And that’s enough to make you feel like doing something.
HubSpot, for example, does this all the time with its free marketing resources.
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