Want effective marketing? You need a startup mentality.

The way people are consuming content has vastly changed in the last decade. While long-standing companies scurry to find new and innovative ways to deliver their messages, startups are successfully creating new avenues to build buzz and engage their audience. Want to stay relevant? Keep a startup mentality. Here are four ways to evolve marketing at your company:

Direct A Movie

Think documentary, not camera on a tripod interviews. People want to be entertained. Forget talking heads. Don’t talk to your audience. Show them. Give them a mini movie on your product or service. Hearken created a new sensor car seat cover and seatbelt that jolts drivers if they fall asleep. The founders could have sat inside their offices and explained it to you. Instead, they did this.

Say Goodbye To Flyers

You know what they do with those flyers you spent hours slaving over? Brace yourself. They throw them in the trash. People want digital and they want different. Rather than invest in boxes of paper, get yourself a good poster designer and a digital display screen. Das Terminal is a new advanced system used to display digital, multi­media content in an interactive way. No more clunky tradeshow poster boards or oversized flyers in your storefronts. Captivate them on the terminal screen and then send them to your phone app.

Give Immediate Customer Service

Forget your website Contact Us page. If the Internet is your digital storefront, there should be an employee there to greet them. LiveChat was created to meet this instant demand. Customers don’t want to fill out a web form and wait the standard 24 hours to hear from you. They also don’t want to stop their web browsing to pick up a phone to call you. If they need help, they want the answer now. Cut down on the number of people who cruise your site, can’t find the answer to their question and leave.

Stop Boring Tradeshow Tabletops

Want to keep tradeshow participants returning to your booth? Give them something they need. At tradeshows across the country companies are devising creative ways to engage attendees. You have to think of outside-of-the-box strategies to use your time at a tradeshow as mobile marketing. Items such as cellphone charging stations are becoming a hit. Take it one step further and only let people use your chargers if they do one live tweet of your booth. Chargeall.com carries a variety of charging station options that are also customizable.

The best way to stay ahead of the curve is to run your marketing department as if your company is the new kid on the block. Don’t forget what we told you last month, there is some startup in their garage right now working their ass off to take your spot.