Digital Marketing
Which Marketing Strategy Is The Best For You?

Which Marketing Strategy Is The Best For You?

If you choose the right marketing strategy, you will be like that little guy in the middle of my diagram above. Yes! Victorious! Fist pumps!

The problem with marketing today is that there are too many options and it is too confusing. It makes me dizzy just thinking about these things and I have been immersed in them for 35 years.

Well, I lay down on my bed last week with a notepad and started to trace my “Unified theory of marketing strategies“with an emphasis on online marketing.

And I actually came up with something that’s not entirely confusing and might even be helpful to some people.

Here it goes …

It’s another four quadrant grid where the vertical axis is an easy to difficult scale and the horizontal axis is a passive to proactive scale.

I emerged with these four agile quadrants:

Difficult and passive = multimedia

Easy and passive = post

Difficult and proactive = Presentations

Easy and proactive = email

Now, all of these strategies can be effective. But, yes, some are easier than others. And liabilities tend to take much longer than proactive ones.

Difficult and passive = multimedia (videos)

Everyone is crazy about video these days. It’s a challenge, but passive strategy. You put a lot of work into creating a video and then you post it on YouTube in the hopes that people will see it.

It’s hard to get it right. It is time consuming and can be expensive. And most of the videos are pure rubbish. If you want to get it right, it takes a lot of change and a lot of time.

Launching a lot of small 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 lot of work to get it right.

Best example: A teacher of non-duality named Rupert Spira (non-duality.rupertspira.com/home). Hold live workshops and film everything. Then your staff breaks them down into questions and answers segments and posts them on YouTube. They last five to fifteen minutes. And what you see is what you get. No tone, no hype. It is his unadulterated teaching.

It has hundreds of videos on YouTube with hundreds of thousands of views. Works? Well, his workshops are always full and all he does is a low-key email announcement to his list every month or two.

I really like this approach. Do you have a lot of good content? Do you look good on video (unlike yours really)? Then you may want to emulate Rupert.

Easy and passive = post

I really like this strategy as, ahem, it built my “Empire”. It’s relatively easy: write an how-to article on your topic once a week, send it to the people on your e-list, and post it on your blog. Fame ensues.

But online posting can be much more than that. You can take those same articles and post them on Medium, LinkedIn, and Ezine Articles. And then you can advertise them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Sometimes you can get great exposure by writing an article for a major online publication. Web traffic multiplies.

The cost is zero; An article takes two to five hours to write (unless it takes you several days). And their ideas are online for eternity for those seeking practical ideas to discover. Some will opt for your electronic list and perpetuate this virtuous cycle of marketing.

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 things will be out there, but somewhat lost in a very large haystack.

I’m still a huge advocate for online posting, but the mountain is getting steeper and steeper. Writing an article or two here and there won’t help you much.

Best example: Well, aside from mine, of course, take a look at Henneke from Delighted marketing. He has a wonderful, readable, and fun blog on business writing and blogging. And walk your talk. It’s about well-written and relevant content. If you don’t have that as a basis, it’s a total waste of time.

Difficult and proactive = Presentations

I built my business on performing in front of live audiences. in professional associations and chambers of commerce. It caught my eye, 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 completed my recent group program with the help of a couple of webinars (also called video conferences). They certainly work.

But I put the presentations in the difficult category, not because they are so difficult to give, but they can take a long time to prepare. The last one I did took me two full days. There were about 200 slides (phew).

Yes, that is not the only way to conduct a webinar. You can simply stream live on Zoom Video, and that can work too. Ultimately, you have to find your style and test what works.

Presentations are proactive since in the end you can ask for the business. And of course, you can turn your webinar recording into a video in an instant and send it to the people on your list. Look it here.

So presentations will always play an important role in my marketing toolbox.

One more thing though: if you don’t have a LOT of people on your email list, good luck getting some great support. Yes, you can do guest presentations hosted by others, but you don’t have the same control and ability to present your professional services.

Best example: John Nemo of LinkedIn Riches (linkedinriches.com). Your webinar is a blast. There are many of them in the world of online marketing. And many, like John, have set them up as permanent webinars that are scheduled to autoplay multiple times a day. They are a kind of hybrid between publication and presentations.

Easy and proactive = email

In my opinion, email is the most powerful general marketing tool. And receive the least respect. But I can’t even imagine being in business without email marketing.

Social media gets all the public relations and attention, but email takes the business. A recent study showed that email generated 40 times the business results of Facebook and Twitter combined.

Email is the longest-running online tool and I think it’s taken for granted. Promotional emails have expanded exponentially over the years, but most are not very good.

We go through our mailboxes as if we sort our mail in the trash. Delete, delete, delete. Why? Because it is not relevant or it is boring. Generally both.

I believe that email has the greatest potential of all online marketing strategies because it is relatively easy and the most proactive marketing medium of all. Your message goes directly to your prospect’s mailbox. Nothing else can do that.

Marketing email offers great opportunities for improvement in several areas:

1. How to incorporate humor as the most powerful attention-grabbing device around (that hardly anyone is using).

2. How to telegraph your value proposition directly to the minds and hearts of your potential customer.

3. How to make your emails clear, focused and easy to read.

4. How to create a compelling call to action that is hard to resist.

5. How to get emails to thousands of potential customers without looking like spam.

If you’re not working on ALL of these, your emails won’t get the attention and response you want.

Best example: Therapy Practice Accelerator. Visit this site and sign up for the list just to see the brilliance of email marketing. It’s about demonstrating results.

What marketing strategies will you choose?

Consider the four quadrants of marketing. The easier a marketing activity is, the more likely you are to actually do it. And the more proactive a marketing activity is, the faster the response.

Regards, Robert

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