better business blog

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The Art Of Passive Marketing

4 May 2014

Here is a thorny question: How much marketing is enough?

The answer is classically that you can never have too much marketing, on the basis that 50% is wasted, but you don’t know which 50% that relates to. Hmmm…I’m not sure that takes us very far.

Change the question a bit and we arrive at: How much active and how much passive marketing do you do? ….A much more interesting question for me, as it gives us a chance to think about splitting our 100% into two chunks, maybe 70/30 or 60/40….

Active marketing can be defined as that work which we set in motion to get our message out to people – what our brand values are, what our USP is and how our products and services add value to other people. We might run adverts in the press, put links onto Twitter, hand out business cards and produce interesting brochures.

Passive marketing can be defined as those ‘quieter’ activities that contribute to our brand building and which keep us in front of people. I’ve realised recently that these ‘slow burn’ activities contribute as much to business success as their louder and prouder active cousins. For me I count the following activities as part of my passive marketing activities:

1) This weekly blog

2) Contributing to the UK Association for TA (UKATA) blog

3) Running free workshops for new clients

4) Delivering networking speaking slots

5) Tweeting about happy working days

6) Administrating an alumni group of Cranfield University colleagues

7) Hosting the weekly business show on www.futureradio.co.uk

…All of these activities are things that I willingly do and love doing. I chose to do them for the joy of it and have recently made the connection that of course they give me good positioning in the market and keep me and brand-rich in front of people.

Twitter can be the graveyard of brand values if we mix sales tweets with drunken weekend rants, so if you’re thinking of heading into the Twitter-sphere beware be careful and make sure staff and colleagues are all aware of the do’s and don’ts of effective Tweeting. Rule No.1 is no drunk tweeting!

So this week, take a look at your business activities and ask yourself if you are doing enough by way of passive marketing to make sure you’re keeping your name in front of people. Passive marketing might not sound glamorous and yet can be the difference that makes the difference when a client needs a somebody (like a busy business coach) and thinks Aha! Richard Maun!

What can you do more of?

Next week: Working Ethically in the Digital Space