Recently, one of our outsourced marketing clients asked me to deliver a short presentation to their entire company about the work we are doing for them and the impact it’s having.
As I was putting together the PowerPoint deck, it reinforced for me how dramatically impactful even simple marketing can be – if done properly – and the disservice most firms are doing to themselves by not doing any real marketing. Here’s what I talked about with this client…
First, I reviewed the fundamentals of what it takes to acquire and keep clients using a model we developed called the Marketing & Sales Pyramid™. The key steps in the model include:
- Establishing your strategies/positioning
- Building awareness
- Generating & nurturing sales leads
- Acquiring first-time clients
- Ensuring repeat clients
Then we talked about the handful of services we are currently providing to them:
- Blog writing
- Promoting the blog with email and social media
- Curating content and sharing it on social media
That’s it! Pretty basic… a little content, email and social. No big advertising plans. No aggressive SEO efforts. Just some simple marketing tactics, implemented frequently and consistently.
OK, so what’s the impact of some simple marketing like that? Pretty significant, actually…
Blogs support your strategy and positioning. They showcase your Subject Matter Expertise. They are a proof source, showing potential buyers that you can do what you say you can do. Simple example… If you want to position your firm as experts in ‘shopper research,’ then write blog posts about shopper research… how to do it, when and where to do it, what you can learn from it and so on.
A blog post has no value if no one reads it, so a key objective of marketing is to promote the blog on Email and Social media, getting as many eyeballs as possible on the content.
Email Marketing reinforces top-of-mind awareness with those currently in your database (clients, former clients, prospective clients); it also plays in an important role in nurturing sales leads during the sales process and staying top-of-mind with current clients between projects, ensuring they come back to you when their next project is ready.
Social Media helps build awareness among those outside of your current database. By sharing links to your blog, you’re also supporting your position to those who read it. And when they link to the blog, you’re putting them on your website – providing an opportunity for them to look around and maybe reach out to you for more information (a.k.a. generating sales leads).
Curating content and sharing it on social media – while not driving people to your content or your website – is still checking-off a couple of the key boxes on the steps in the pyramid. First and foremost, it is helping to build and maintain awareness for your firm. And secondly, assuming you’re curating content that’s aligned with what you do, this also supports your positioning. For example, if you serve the automotive industry and share a link to an article from Automotive News magazine, readers will associate your business with that kind of content… which is exactly the reason to do it.
Bottom Line
Look at what’s happening here… even with just a handful of simple marketing tactics, we are still effectively moving potential buyers through the Marketing & Sales Pyramid™ with multiple touch points all along the way – supporting your position in the market, building & maintaining awareness, generating & nurturing sales leads and staying top-of-mind with existing clients. Not bad for just a few low-cost/no-cost, easy-to-implement simple marketing tactics, huh?
So, what’s stopping you?