The problem with marketing today is that there are way too many options and it's much too confusing. It makes me dizzy just thinking about this stuff and I've been immersed in it for 35 years.
Well, I lay down on my bed last week with a notepad and started to map out my "Unified Theory of Marketing Strategies" with an emphasis on online marketing.
And I actually came up with something that's not totally confusing, and might even be helpful to a few people.
Here goes...
It's yet another four-quadrant grid where the vertical axis is a scale from easy to hard and the horizontal axis is a scale from passive to proactive.
I emerged with these four snappy quadrants:
Hard and Passive = Multimedia
Easy and Passive = Publishing
Hard and Proactive = Presentations
Easy and Proactive = Email
Now, all of these strategies can be effective. But, yes some are easier than others. And the passive ones tend to take a lot longer than the proactive ones.
Hard and Passive = Multimedia (Videos)
Everyone is crazy about video these days. It's a challenging, yet passive strategy. You put a lot work into creating a video and then post it on YouTube hoping people see it.
It's difficult to do well. It's time-consuming and it can be expensive. And most videos are pure crap. If you want to do it well, it takes a chunk of change and a lot of time.
Throwing up a lot of little videos on your website can be a nice touch, but they usually don't get people to call you in droves.
So, as you can see, I'm not crazy about a video strategy for self-employed professionals. I'm not saying they can't work, but it's a whole lot of work to do right.
Best example: A non-duality teacher named Rupert Spira (non-duality.rupertspira.com/home). He does live workshops and films everything. Then his staff chops them up into questions and answer segments and posts them on YouTube. They're five to fifteen minutes long. And what you see is what you get. No pitch, no hype. It's his teaching unadulterated.
He has hundreds of videos on YouTube with hundreds of thousands of views. Does it work? Well, his workshops are always full and all he does is a low-key email announcement to his list every month or two.
I like this approach a lot. Got a lot of good content? Look good on video (unlike yours truly)? Then you may want to emulate Rupert.
Easy and Passive = Publishing
I happen to like this strategy a lot as it, ahem, built my "Empire." It's relatively easy: Write a how-to article on your subject matter once a week, send it out to those on your e-list and publish on your blog. Fame ensues.
But online publishing can be a lot more than that. You can take those same articles and publish them on Medium, LinkedIn, and Ezine Articles. And then you can announce them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Sometimes you can get big exposure when writing an article for a major online publication. Web traffic multiplies.
The cost is zero; an article takes from two to five hours to write (unless it takes you several days). And your ideas are online for eternity to be discovered by those looking for practical ideas. Some will opt-in to your e-list and perpetuate this virtuous marketing circle.
The downside, of course, is that, according to my extensive research, (a 10 second Google search), there are 2 million articles published online every day. The mind reels. So your stuff will be out there, but somewhat lost in a very big haystack.
I'm still a big advocate of online publishing, but the mountain is getting steeper and steeper. Just writing an article or two here and there won't help you much.
Best Example: Well, other than mine, of course, check out Henneke of Enchanted Marketing. She has a wonderful, readable, fun blog on business writing and blogging. And she walks her talk. It's all about well-written, relevant content. If you don't have that as a foundation, it's a total waste of time.
Hard and Proactive = Presentations
I built my business on presentations in front of live audiences at professional associations and chambers of commerce. It got me attention, added people to my mailing list and generated warm leads for marketing coaching.
And I still do presentations today in the form of webinars. I just filled my recent group program with the help of a couple webinars (also called video conferences). They most certainly do work.
But I put presentations in the hard category, not because they are all that hard to give, but can take a long time to prepare. The last one I did took me two full days. There were about 200 slides (whew).
Yes, that's not the only way to do a webinar. You can just go live on Zoom Video, and that can work as well. You ultimately have to find your style and test what works.
Presentations are proactive in that at the end you can ask for the business. And, of course, you can turn the recording of the webinar into a video in a snap and send it out to those on your list. Watch it here.
So presentations will always play a big part in my marketing toolkit.
One other thing though - If you don't have a LOT of people on your email list, good luck in getting much of an attendance. Yes, you can do guest presentations hosted by others, but you don't have the same control and ability to pitch your professional services.
Best example: John Nemo of LinkedIn Riches (linkedinriches.com). His webinar is a blast. There are a lot of them out there in the online marketing world. And many, Like John, have set them up as evergreen webinars that are scheduled to play automatically several times a day. These are kind of a hybrid between publishing and presentations.
Easy and Proactive = Email
In my opinion, email is the most powerful overall marketing tool. And it gets the least respect. But I can't imagine even being in business without email marketing.
Social media gets all the PR and all the attention, but email gets the business. A recent study showed that email generated 40 times the business results of Facebook and Twitter combined.
Email is the online tool that's been around the longest, and I think it's taken for granted. Promotional emails have expanded exponentially over the years, but most of it isn't very good.
We wade through our email boxes like we sort our mail over the trashcan. Delete, delete, delete. Why? Because it's either not relevant or it's boring. Usually both.
I feel that email has the greatest potential of all the online marketing strategies because it's both relatively easy and the most proactive marketing medium of all. Your message goes right into the mailbox of your potential client. Nothing else can do that.
Marketing email holds great opportunities for improvement in several areas:
1. How to incorporate humor as the most powerful attention-getting device in existence (that almost nobody is using).
2. How to telegraph your value proposition straight to the minds and hearts of your prospect.
3. How to make your emails clear, focused, and easy-to-read.
4. How to craft a compelling call-to-action that is hard to resist.
5. How to get emails to thousands of your prospects without looking like spam.
If you're not working on ALL of these, your emails will not get the attention and response you want.
Best Example: Therapy Practice Accelerator. Visit this site and get on the list just to see the brilliance of the email marketing. It's all about demonstrating results.
What marketing strategies will you choose?
Take the four marketing quadrants into consideration. The easier a marketing activity, the more likely you'll actually do it. And the more proactive a marketing activity, the faster the response you'll get.
Cheers, Robert
