Up until a decade ago, marketing used to be about producing pretty, clever and often loud advertisements. The prettier, more clever and louder they were, the more valuable. Today, however, that approach can land marketers into dangerous territory. In fact, old-school interruptive marketing can have a significantly negative impact on your consumers’ confidence and diminish their trust in your brand if you’re interrupting them without adding any value. So how do you create value for your consumers? Be useful.

I’ve written before on marketing’s Move, Touch and Inspire cascade, demonstrating that the Holy Grail for marketing in today’s environment is to earn brand advocacy. That can only come from providing a useful, memorable, and quality experience for your consumers—time and time again.

Disruption, however, is still a critical component in getting consumers’ attention—it has to be, given the message bombardment consumers face daily. So how do you make your brand stand out? Here are some things to consider when developing your disruption strategy:

1. Before deploying any digital advertising scheme, ask yourself, Am I interrupting or am I providing value? And, What will my consumer likely be doing when I insert my brand into their day?
2. Look hard at your industry for ways to close the distance between your consumers’ wants and what they get in the context of your brand.
3. Consider building tools that add value or share knowledge with your user, and possibly the community, in the context of your industry.

To build a relationship with your customers and increase the quality and frequency of your customer experiences, you need a well thought through digital strategy. Consider these questions about your technology and you will be on your way to producing your digital advertising roadmap: How can your technology:

• Collect and make useful information available that was previously inaccessible?
• Enable new ways for people to interact with one another in an unfettered environment?
• Create a highly personalized and tailored experience for users?
• Eliminate steps in any crucial process?
• Thoughtfully think ahead and predict users’ needs by using previously difficult to obtain information like location, local weather, or other data?