Original post April 10, 2013
When it comes to marketing there are two necessary strategies for the online business:
- Ongoing Marketing and Visibility for the Business / Brand
- Launch Promotions (for products or services).
Personally, I love to do brand/ business marketing. Here’s why: It’s all about the giving.. giving tools, resources, tidbits of info that will help encourage, empower and equip folks. When marketing a brand you are really just sharing what that brand is about and how it helps others. This is fun and exciting and it allows an opportunity for the business to really shine in its market. It is not asking, selling, or requiring anything other than the opportunity to share and give to others.
It is vitally important that we as OBM’s have a solid brand marketing plan in place that is ongoing.. should be set on auto-pilot as much as possible. This would look like: pre-loaded daily tweets of topical truths from a clients book or products, it may look like weekly tips (wink), it may look like optin pages with free offerings, it may look like coupons or specials offered into the market… it truly is a giving opportunity.
Put a schedule in place for these types of efforts to ensure they do not get overlooked in the day in and day out of putting out fires.. as this type of marketing isn’t closest to the money, it isn’t exciting, it doesn’t demand attention but it is concrete and solid in the continual growth of the brand or business.
Launch Promotions being the sprinter, need to be extremely strategic, unlike the brand marketing which you can play around with, do different things, flow with, launch promotions need to be very hard hitting. The strategy needs to be very targeted to be most effective you will have researched the market, understand the language of the potential customer, got in their heads and began to understand the buying style therefor understanding the elements needed to market the product or service to target.
Many times an OBM may suggest bringing in a launch marketing expert to assist with the strategy of a launch promotion, or receive clear instruction from the client on the marketing plan for that launch. If you are in a spot as an OBM where you are not certain what to do in a launch situation, it is important you speak up and let your client know. I say this because we must always keep what is best for the business at the core of how we run a business. If the business needs a programmer (and I who know nothing about programming) attempt to create the code this business will be in trouble when we go to apply the code. I would never do this. If the business needs a solid marketing plan and you don’t have it, please let the client know and get the resources you need. Now understand it is still the responsibility of the OBM to ensure it is implemented properly, but of course. ?
Think of it like this: Brand Marketing is a marathon… it’s long and slow, but steady and sustainable. Launch Promotions are sprints.. they hit fast and hard, carry a big wow factor and should be as impacting as possible with every effort.