The Marketing Strategy Relay

There’s a very good reason most people fail with their marketing.

It’s because there are a menagerie of very clever people giving conflicting advice on which marketing strategies work.

If you listen to people like Gary Vaynerchuk, they’ll tell you to hustle and make sales. Simple as that.

Neil Patelwill tell you all the reasons why website management and SEO are the way to go. Mike Stelzneris all about creating social media content and forming a brand alliance.

(Madison Avenue ad agencies won’t tell you a thing before you pay your fee... But what they do is create innovative brand recognition through promotions and campaigns.)

So, which genius do you listen to? What’s the way to go?

The truth is that as our businesses grow, our engagement and marketing strategies change.

The way to go:

It might be useful to think of your marketing strategy as a relay team (of Olympians).

Relays rely on team training, as well as short-, medium- and long- term goals. They rely on passing the baton seamlessly between equally talented elements who have different strengths to bring to the whole.

Completing our first sales needs to be personal and intimate, based on existing familiarity and trust. It relies on networking with people who are on message with your mission. That’s where you hustle, focus on sales, and build social capital.

As most of us are excruciatingly aware though, sooner or later, our mum has bought everything we have to offer. Our best friends are sick of hearing about it.

That’s the moment to pass the baton.

You made it off the starting line, and came out firing. You used your personal platforms and networks to refine a strategy for communicating and converting your product. Remember those days?

Pass that Baton, Baby

The next stage is direct responsemarketing. It’s about identifying the problem your customer has, and presenting a viable solution for them tailored to their needs.

Direct response marketing is a particular breed. It’s heavily focussed on addressing the  pain pointsbeing experienced by clients and leads. It's a viable solution for creating cash flow in the early stages of business development. Pain is a more effective short-term way of calling people to action than pleasure. Tapping into the struggles being experienced by your target audience and offering an effective solution is the essence of Direct Response marketing.

For emerging businesses and coaches, it’s a great way of building your reputation. Dense sales capacityand quickly growing a portfolio of testimonials are the names of the game. This way, you tailor yourself to people in your direct line of influence, and to the people they refer to you.

It also requires a fairly skeletal online setup: a sales funnel, a landing page, and an effective ad campaign. The focus is on immediate growth- it’s about this sale, this month, this quarter.

(All of which are extremely important in getting your business up and running- right?)

There’s a great deal of potential for businesses to get a little bit stuck here though…

To either forget to pass the baton at all and leave their runner going until they die of exhaustion mid-stride, or to have them leave the track entirely and go running after unrelated ventures.

(Have you ever seen an Olympic gold medallist do that?)

The Way to Go Further

If you’re strategic about your direct response marketing, it’s a great opportunity to measure and refine which promotions work, and which need to be improved. They key is finding out what the most effective strategies are for reaching different markets. This is the time to turn your promotions into processes- just like an agency would. It’s the learning opportunity for moving your sphere of influence outwards, and creating trust with people who have never met you, or your networks.

It’s a great time to journal and document what you’ve learned in this period. Use that material to create online content that will form a hub from which your own platform can grow.

A sales funnel and landing page now need to be joined by a well-structured website. It needs engaging and informational content, and testimonials. This is where Search Engine Optimisation comes in- the third leg of your race is about pushing hard, correcting your course, and preparing for the home stretch.

The Home Stretch

When you pass that baton on,  brandingis born. The home stretch is creating a recognisable, trustworthy brand. It relies on the solid foundation of a proven, evolving and needs-based product... And a sales strategy that engages people well outside your personal networks. Focusing on pain points is no longer the key strategy in this leg of the race- creating the pleasure of belonging is.

It’s also the perfect time to look at the ways that your product can enhance or affiliate itself with existing businesses. You’re no longer relying on your own platform to create engagement- you’ve got opportunities to use your reputation to leverage partner communities.

This is why Apple doesn’t pretend to have the best software. It doesn’t need to. It relies on knowing that not a lot of people want to be the only person at the party with an Android.

Likewise, it’s why Android brands stick together. For the people who do want to be the only ones at the party without an Apple, they want to be able to be part of the Android Tribe.

It’s why no one buys a Dell or Asus computer which doesn’t have Microsoft programming. When you are good at affiliating your brand with the greats, products begin to seem naked without it.

In different ways, those brands have leveraged the pleasure point of belonging, and created massive, worldwide recognition by moving together beyond the finish line.

We don’t even need to point out that that’s the victory lap, right?

So, remember: your marketing and sales will evolve as you grow. The things that take you to success will quite often stop you moving to the next level- and that perfectly normal.

Just know when to pass the baton.