There are three general categories of marketing that form the “Marketing Triangle”: Active Marketing, Passive Marketing and Follow-up. It takes a commitment to all three categories to have a truly effective marketing campaign. How much emphasis you place in each category is determined by the type of business you have, as well as the stage your business is in. When you are brand new in business and working to get customers NOW, your approach will be different than when you are in an established business looking to gradually increase your customer base.
When people are purchasing a service, they are looking for some assurance that what is promised can (and will) be delivered. Unlike a product where people have something tangible to see/touch/taste, the only way people can decide whether a service will meet their needs is through reputation or their experience of the person who is offering the service. People who are new in business don’t have reputation to fall back on. They typically don’t have much of a track record. So, that leaves the experience potential customers have when they interact with the service provider.
That’s where Active Marketing comes into the picture.
For service businesses, especially in the early stages, Active Marketing is crucial. This is how you fill your “pipeline” – that steady flow of potential customers that need to be exposed to who you are and what you do in order for you to generate enough business to stay in business. It truly is a numbers game. Everything else being equal, the business with the most business is the one more people know about. It really is that simple.
Active Marketing is what you do to reach out and connect in a personal way with potential customers. It gives them a sense of who you are.
Some examples of Active Marketing Strategies are:
- Networking
- Public Speaking
- Meeting with referral partners
- Writing Articles (especially if you can include your picture)
Choosing a couple of Active Marketing Strategies and doing them well will move your business forward more quickly than anything else you can do.
Unfortunately, it’s the scarier kind of marketing. It forces us to get out of our comfort zone. Most business owners would rather do something that feels less risky. Sadly, less risky is often just an illusion.
I hear the same story over and over as I meet with new business owners (and sometimes owners of more established businesses). “I’ve spent so much time and energy on marketing, and I’m just not getting any (or enough) business!” Then I ask them to tell me what they’ve done. Almost without fail, the emphasis has been on creating brochures, logos, cards, letterhead and a web page. Then I ask how they are getting that information out to prospects, or getting people to their web page. Sometimes they tell me they are doing direct mail. Sometimes they are doing a little networking. Mostly the stuff is still in a cupboard somewhere. By and large, they are doing very little to get that information out into the marketplace where people can see it. They have spent time, money and energy on these efforts. At times they’ve spent a lot of time, money and energy and they are feeling pretty down about the process of marketing because it hasn’t gotten the results they expected.
As I see it, investing time, money and energy in marketing materials that we are unsure of is a very big risk. Unless we have a lot of expendable income (which is rare), it is far better to test the waters with Active Marketing and find out what works. In the early stages you can learn a lot from your Active Marketing that will help you create great Passive Marketing materials. When you are talking to people about your business, try different ways of describing what you do. Some will inspire people to want to know more and some will fall flat. Some will make sense to your potential customers and some will leave them glassy-eyed. Experiment, learn, and then apply that knowledge to become more successful. Sure, you’ll invest some time, money and energy. But, it is a lot less than what you could invest in materials that aren’t doing the job.
Does this mean that brochures, cards, etc. are a bad investment? Absolutely not. It just means that people are often using materials that don’t convey the right message and/or they are using them in a way that doesn’t serve them.
When we look at the Marketing Triangle, Active Marketing forms the base of the triangle. It provides the foundation needed for us to be successful with all of our marketing efforts. Depending on which study you read, it takes an average of between 5 and 12 contacts before somebody does business with us. Those contacts can come in many ways. Passive Marketing and Follow up are added ways to make contact. They work best after people know you.
Passive Marketing is the stuff that doesn’t need your active participation to be effective. It is your print or web-based material that reinforces and builds on what people have learned from interacting with you. It serves to help people remember who you are and what you do. It gets more senses involved, which helps people retain more information than they do from just talking with you or hearing you speak.
Some examples of Passive Marketing Strategies are:
- Business Cards
- Brochures
- Marketing Packets
- Website
- Letterhead
Start small and build up. You don’t have to do everything all at once. That way if you find that you’re not on target you can easily adjust before you’ve blown your entire marketing budget. Websites are much easier and less expensive to edit, making that a good place to start.
Now that you’ve got some people in the pipeline and you’ve created Passive Marketing materials that send a message potential customers find useful, you can successfully move into the third category of marketing: Follow up.
Follow up can be composed of Active or Passive Marketing Strategies. We can certainly follow-up with people when we run into them at events, or we can send them information. It isn’t so important how we choose to follow-up. It’s just important that we do it and that we do it consistently over time.
Some examples of Follow up are:
- Newsletters
- Nice to meet you notes
- Phone calls
- Postcards
- Invitations to attend other events
Anything that keeps you on people’s minds in a way that jogs their memory so they think about you when they (or someone they know) need your service is a form of follow-up.
We could certainly discuss each of the categories in the Marketing Triangle in greater detail. But for now, just remember that it takes a commitment to all three categories of marketing to support a healthy Marketing Triangle. The emphasis we place on each category will change over time as our business grows. The shape of the triangle will change, as the emphasis changes. But, it is important to always be doing at least a bit of all three. If we remove one of the categories the triangle will collapse. We are left with a flat line – and you know what that means… it means a lack of life. And when your business is lacking life, it’s not very profitable or very fun. Sometimes it can be revived when it hits that point. But, why go through the agony and stress? Maintain a healthy marketing triangle, deliver what you promise, and you can have a healthy, profitable business.
Wishing you success, prosperity and an enjoyable marketing experience!
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