Despite all of the technological advancements in the fields of business and entrepreneurship, the process of acquiring and keeping customers is still the hardest part of any company's survival. So much goes into the buying journey for a new customer, and customers are more picky than ever before right now. Economic research has shown that a brand must be somehow exposed to a prospective customer SIXTEEN TIMES before the prospect engages with the content. Not even purchasing it yet!
As a result, companies have to systematize their marketing efforts to be broadcast across as many platforms as appropriate and at regular frequencies to the correct audience so that they can ensure the sixteen exposures while avoiding burning through all of their advertising money in one shot.
Even though there are so many thousands of individuals, small agencies, or large firms that offer customized marketing services, and apps that allow you to schedule and streamline your content, all of these are still just tools and cannot do all of the work for you. Sure, you could hire them to do the work for you, but then you are releasing responsibility for all of your advertising to other people who charge steep fees.
A lot of small business owners get trapped in the belief that a scheduling app can somehow solve all of their problems, but the app cannot create the content for you. It just shares it with the world. You have to choose where you want it to be shared and via what channels.
Pulled from an article in Tony Robbins' business blog, a concise list of the types of marketing channels available include:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Paid advertising
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Referral programs
1 & 2 are self-explanatory as singular, focused investments that can be used to make your brand stand out more. #6 offers a creative, internal process that you can customize relative to your current customer base or community and empower them in your own unique ways to spread the word about your product and be your new sales team. #3-5, however, is where a lot of brands get bogged down.
The common assumption is that every brand must have all three. Even though we will not espouse a right or wrong answer here, and because there is in fact not a one-way-fits-all answer for all brands, each brand must determine the marketing channel(s) that are most appropriate for their audience and product.
This is where the experimental mindset comes in. So much of the front end marketing effort is going to go toward figuring out the right combo of content and emails to share and connect to which social media platforms, all of which must be decided by who your ideal client is and on what platforms that population is spending the most amount of time.
So answer this one question before you waste months creating irrelevant content and ad budgets: WHAT TYPE OF MARKETING (from the list above) DO YOU THINK IS BEST FOR YOUR COMPANY TO BEGIN WITH?
Start with what you know about your ideal client, and then use the list above to create a preliminary experiment that combines pieces of some or all of the options.
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/career-business/lead-generation/
