When you’re trying to break through in a crowded market, you have to do something different with your marketing. You have to highlight something that the others don’t have or can’t do. You can be innovative, or you can be disruptive.

Innovation is a process that turns good ideas into tangible business improvements. Innovation typically connotes an iterative process of building on what came before, such as creating a product that is more affordable, easier to use, or better performing than existing products. Disruption typically connotes the creation of an entirely new category of products, pursuing radical organizational methods that lead to better business outcomes, or, in marketing, finding new ways to reach customers.

What does disruptive marketing look like? Marketing that brings a product to an entirely new audience is disruptive. Marketing through new channels is also disruptive. The internet ad ecosystem disrupted TV and print ads, while marketing on social media disrupted paid internet ads by allowing businesses to connect directly with customers. When it works, a disruptive strategy transforms an industry and becomes the new standard operating procedure. Just look at how hard it is to break through on social media today compared to ten years ago. Being a business on social media used to be disruptive; now it’s just what everybody does.

Most of the time, you don’t have to be disruptive to reach the people who will become your most loyal customers. But if you have a new product, or a unique way of framing an existing product, you might want to market it with an equally novel strategy. There are some things to consider before developing a disruptive marketing strategy.

Approach Disruption Strategically

“Disruptive” doesn’t mean “random” or “spontaneous.” Don’t just throw things at the wall until something sticks. Disruptive marketing should be part of a wider innovation strategy. A business that approaches innovation strategically makes room for new ideas to be tested. In a culture of innovation, employees feel comfortable knowing they won’t be judged by their failures. If you take a chance with a new marketing approach and it doesn’t work, you’ve only failed if you learn nothing from it. Something going wrong is an opportunity to discover exactly what worked and how those lessons can inform future marketing efforts.

It’s easier to take chances without fearing failure if you lay out the boundaries of the experiment by setting goals. As usual, your goals should be SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. To keep a project from getting out of hand, know how much time and money you want to spend on it and give yourself an idea of what success looks like.

Do Your Research

It’s tough to do something truly novel. “There is nothing new under the sun,” someone both wise and jaded wrote some 2500 years ago. Before implementing a radical new idea, make sure that the idea is indeed new and radical. You might have an idea to stand out from the crowd of boring, staid business social media accounts by posting memes and engaging with topical issues and pop culture in a humorous way…but Wendy’s did that almost ten years ago, and so many (too many, perhaps) brands have since followed suit and content has grown weirder and weirder in a bid for attention that audiences have grown tired of the whole thing (warning: there’s some weird, borderline not-safe-for-work stuff in the linked article, and it’s all from the social media accounts of well-known businesses).

If it turns out that a seemingly radical marketing idea has been done before, that doesn’t mean you have to scrap the concept entirely. The next step is to understand why it worked or why it didn’t work and what that means for your business at your moment in history. Learn the right lessons and look for ways to push the idea further or make it more relevant to your business and your customers. Many innovative ideas are born from realizing that an idea isn’t so innovative after all, but rather than giving up, you push it even further.

Is It Right for Your Brand?

Every business should know what their brand stands for, whether you’re a retailer or a manufacturer, whether you’re selling handmade jewelry or financial services. Your brand is what connects with your customers on an emotional level. It’s just as important as the quality of your products when it comes to creating customer loyalty. Your marketing has to speak your customers’ language. They will come to know it and relate to it, and if you change it too drastically in the name of disruption, trust can be broken. Customers won’t know who you are anymore.

Disruptive approaches aren’t right for everybody. If you’re in an industry steeped in tradition, doing something new and weird might only serve to confuse and alienate potential customers. Before following that new idea, diving into that new social media platform, or jumping on that new technology, understand how it helps you meet your strategic goals, and—most importantly—how your customers will react.

Finding the Right Approach for Your Business

A disruptive marketing campaign can only succeed if it is disruptive in the right way, playing to your strengths, highlighting what makes you special, and appealing to the preferences of your intended audience. That may seem to take some of the magic and freedom out of disruption, but what matters is how it appears to your customers. The magician on stage is in total control, going through well-rehearsed motions. Nothing he’s doing is magic to him, but it is to the audience, and that’s what matters.