Destination Innovation Unlocks Creative Problem Solving for Businesses

Every business, big or small, needs to solve problems creatively. Paul Sloane’s business, Destination Innovation, helps companies of all sizes tackle challenges with a new perspective by offering lateral thinking workshops, online courses, and trainings. While he is based in the United Kingdom, Paul works with organizations across the United States, South Africa, and Europe. The worldwide audience Paul serves includes event planners, sales directors, marketing directors, and CEOs who want a speaker for their next conference.

In addition to being a speaker and offering virtual content, Paul is the author of multiple books, including bestseller Lateral Thinking Puzzlers, The Leader’s Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills, and Lateral Thinking for Every Day. Before starting his own business, Paul worked in a variety of roles in the corporate world, including a position on the sales team at IBM and later at other companies as a marketing director, managing director, international VP, and a CEO for a startup.

In 2001, Paul left the startup and a year later, he offered his first talk and a workshop as part of Destination Innovation. “I think starting your own business is a great thing to do, and it’s really rewarding and challenging,” he said. “Working in corporations is good too. I’ve done both. I’ve worked in large companies and small companies, and I like working with leaders of smaller companies and medium-sized companies to try and help them overcome some of the challenges that they face.”

Overcoming challenges with lateral thinking

The cornerstone of Destination Innovation is the concept of lateral thinking. “Lateral thinking is approaching problems from a fresh direction,” Paul explained. “ In contrast to conventional thinking, where we tend to go ahead in a predictable and logical way, [with lateral thinking] you come at the problem from almost a random direction in order to come up with a solution.”

For Destination Innovation, lateral thinking and marketing problem solving comes into play as Paul provides services for his clients and faces challenges with his own business. During the COVID pandemic, his model of being an in-person speaker at events was no longer sustainable. “I pivoted and I developed a number of online courses, which has been great fun,” Paul said. “I’ve tried to encapsulate my expertise in online courses, and I promote those primarily on Udemy.” His bestselling online course is called Master Lateral Thinking, which has over 10,000 users.

As he pivoted, Paul needed to find innovative ways to market to his online audience, and he began to focus on incorporating more videos into social media as part of his marketing plan.

Changing the game with social media and video

With 40,000 followers on X and 800 LinkedIn connections, Paul actively markets to his audience on those platforms. “LinkedIn remains the single most powerful social media for business connections,” he said. “I’ve got my own group on LinkedIn called ‘Lateral Thinking in Business’. And that gets me some traction, some connections, and then when I post on LinkedIn, I’ll quite often get responses and leads from that, which might turn into a speaking engagement or a workshop.”

A key element of Paul’s social media strategy is video, which he uses to keep content fresh and engaging. For example, he gave a TEDx Talk that has over 160,000 views on YouTube, which he promotes across multiple other channels.

“I’ll promote the video clips of me speaking or clips from the courses on YouTube, TikTok, and other places. Someone who is interested in seeing me speak can see me,” explained Paul. “The whole market is moving much more towards video than it used to.” In response to that, he has experimented with AI-assisted videos by using tools to help him write scripts.

Even after implementing video in his strategy, one of Paul’s biggest challenges is cutting through the noise online and grabbing attention. He is constantly trying new things on social media to generate leads and grow his business, but social media is not the only way he markets his services. Paul recognizes the power of email and owning his contact list and has been using Constant Contact for his email marketing for over twenty years.

Harnessing the power of the contact list

With Constant Contact, Paul sends regular emails to nearly 5,000 contacts, including monthly newsletters and special offers. “The mailing list itself is the most valuable thing,” he said. “All of the people I’ve ever done business with over the last 20 years are on there if they haven’t dropped out.” To nurture leads, he responds to non-openers after a few days, which yields additional response and interest.

Paul also stressed the importance of providing value for your subscribers in your newsletters and clearly stating that value in the subject line. “It’s not about you telling them how great your product is and how great your offers are,” Paul said. “You have to offer them something that’s of value to them in terms of a hint, a tip, a recipe, something that they’re going to like.”

When Paul sends his monthly newsletter, he makes it entertaining and topical by including recent blog posts, interesting videos, links to courses, and amusing anecdotes. His audience resonates with a sense of humor, and Paul taps into this to promote his offerings in a fun, relatable way.

“The key thing is to keep the mailing list fresh and to add value for listeners.”

Learning from results

In addition to keeping the content fresh, Paul pays close attention to the results available in the Constant Contact reporting dashboard. Specifically, he looks at open rates and click rates and tracks their progress over time.

For a deeper dive into the data, Paul looks at who is engaging with specific links, which enables him to segment his list and personalize his content to make it as effective as possible.

“If 30 people have clicked on a link relating to an online course, I can collect all of those names and put them into a new group,” he said. “That group then becomes the people who are interested in courses. Then, I can mail special offers to that group because I know they’ve self-identified as being more interested in a particular facet, a particular problem. So, you can target your special offers much more accurately. The fact that I can do that in Constant Contact is something I appreciate.”

With the tools available in Constant Contact, Paul is able to see what works when he experiments with different offers, courses, and groups. The reporting insights help him continually experiment while always focusing on the customer and their needs.

“A small business can’t compete with a big business in terms of marketing campaigns or funding or resources, but they can outmaneuver them in terms of agility. You can do cheeky things, outrageous things, really flexible things — you can offer things the big companies can’t do. Keep trying new things…and the things that don’t work, stop. The things that do work, do more of. Be innovative because that’s your key advantage.”