The Real Automated Marketing
Are you passing up simple opportunities for marketing? Too busy? There’s no excuse when it comes to passive marketing.
- Image via Wikipedia
Are you including a link to your web site, facebook page, and twitter profile in your e-mail footer? Why not? Every e-mail software in existence lets you add an automated footer or tagline. Every time you send an e-mail, it should be automatic. You should be promoting your business, your blog, and your latest activity (which is where social media like facebook and twitter come in). People go out and spend money on every scam automated marketing technique, and don’t do the free things that really do work, that are right there in arms reach!
What about your voice mail? Does it just say hold on a minute, or leave a message, or here listen to America singing something confusing like “Horse with No Name”? What about “Hey, while you’re waiting, or before you hang up and I get a click in my voicemail, our web site address is ___. We take orders online 24/7. You can see what we’re doing by connecting with us on facebook or twitter. Add us…” (chances are, they’re already logged in to one of those, along with half of the country).
Why *wouldn’t* you use passive marketing to extend the reach, the opportunities, and the services of your business, let alone give clients more ways to connect with you? Stubborn old-fashionness? Look the world was going to change 40 years ago, too. Remember typewriters? You either reach the market as it is now, or you kick back to re-runs of Mayberry RFD (which is available in streaming video online, by the way).
Not Technical Doesn’t Matter: Not technical? So? Look, a typewriter and a fax machine are a lot harder to use than twitter or finding the button to add a footer to your e-mails. Figured out your VCR yet? You probably have a DVD player now, which is much simpler, right? But if you’re over 40, you’ve used a VCR. If you can set the clock on the VCR, you can figure out how to connect with people on your Facebook page.
Your Web Site Coma: That brings us to one more topic. Your web site. One of our cartoons on the site is about someone complaining that visitors are landing on his website. “Why is that a problem?” his friend asks. “Because my web site is chasing away my visitors”, he says. You should have your web site on all your literature – flyers, doorhangers, company manuals, promotional books and PDFs, cookbooks if you sell them, whatever. And it should be in all your electronic communications. Get this now:
Your Brand: One simple rule of branding is first and foremost: brand everything. There’s more you can learn, but that alone is pretty important.
But if you never touch your site, don’t care about it, don’t even know if it’s broken or up and running, if the content’s out of date, old phone numbers and e-mails, or just stale, stale, stale — ask yourself — you don’t care, so why should anyone else? What, because it’s a web site? Would you keeping hanging the same flyer on the same door for the next five years? If not, because it’s silly, why does your web site have the same content it always did? If you’re biased toward it, just because it’s technology, you’re passing up business, and doing it because you’ve told yourself you don’t like these newfangled keyboards – you prefer typewriters. You don’t want to set the clock on your VCR, you prefer 8mm projectors and slide carousels. It’s just too complicated. Look, we’re grownups, we’ve learned far more complex things in our lives, so what is it really? Isn’t it that it’s just work, and we feel a little more tired today than we did yesterday?
The New Reality: OK, so if it’s something like that, then there’s what you have to deal with. Business is like this – you get into it, including the changes, or you get out. Or maybe it’s that you don’t believe? People laughed at twitter when it came out. Now a lot of us get our mortgage rate updates there. People said Facebook was for useless banter among buddies (we hear that word “useless” a lot, and it’s almost always applied to something that’s incredibly useful – ask yourself why – huh? ask.). Now 75% of all real estate agents are in Facebook -wait – that was last year – it has grown since then! Maybe that’s not your market, but your market is there, and going in droves. You either go where the market goes, or I can send you that link to Mayberry RFD. Opie is still as hilarious as ever. But you know what I mean.
So now, brand your stuff. Not just with your logo – that’s old fashioned thinking. Logos were created in the days when you started a business by going to the stationary store. When’s the last time you needed stationary? Brand with your links. Brand with your connections. Brand with the ability to interact with you. That’s modern branding, and it’s not a passing fad. Myspace started 4 years ago. If you’re in the music business, and you’re not in Myspace, you’re nobody. Nobody. Facebook stared in 2008 and it’s not getting smaller or dying down. People no longer ask, “are you in facebook”. That lasted about a year. Now what you hear is, “what’s your facebook id?” It’s just assumed. If you’re not there, you’re not part of the conversation – and while it’s easy to say we don’t care about that – here’s a better way to put it – if you’re not there, you’re not part of the market. Word of mouth? The new word of mouth is in Facebook. That’s the new Rotary Club and corporate golf game. Not being in Facebook today is like not having a toll-free number 6 years ago, before nationwide long-distance was free on everyone’s GSM cell phones. You were just throwing away business. Guess what’s waiting for you? Your company ID in facebook. Haven’t claimed it yet? Someone’s going to. They’re just waiting for you to go out of business. Go get it – it’s not like it’s not free.
In summary, you want to use your passive marketing opportunities, because they’re free, easy, and take almost no effort. You could trip over them, because they’re right in front of you. You want your marketing to be fresh. If your web sites hasn’t changed recently, you’ve been serving the same meatloaf every night for a month. I don’t care if it is the best in the world, now everyone is eating at the neighbor’s house. And lastly, if you’re ignoring social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin, and even youtube) because you don’t know how to do it, or don’t want to learn, you might as well hang a sign over your business that says “founded a century ago, and still working there”. You’re missing everyone under 50. OK, not everyone, but everyone that’s spending any money. More or less. So wasn’t this article about passive marketing? Yeah, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t bring active marketing into it, because you need to know what you’re missing in both realms, and in case this is the only article you read, we had to take our shot at talking about it.
Market Moose – handing out marketing reality, before it’s too late!