Marketing Channel or Campaign?

Online marketing is the fastest changing medium in marketing

It’s highly reactive. For those of you who have been online for the past decade like I have, you have seen the trends and fads come and go.

You might remember the first ebooks and how you used to print them off so you could read them, using a tonne of ink and running out of shelf space faster than if you bought the hardback.

The affiliate marketing became huge. You could latch on to the next wave of product launches – still a popular thing today – and pick up some extra cash, or even serious cash for those with big, responsive lists, and you never had to make a product.

Then we watched the long copy sales letters, which still work but fewer people sit there reading these days as high content blog article has begun to rule along with video landing pages that build trust faster than text on a page ever could.

Trust has changed. The tools have changed. Hell, even video has changed. And then you throw social media into the mix and any wonder people who are somewhat brick and mortar mindset in business, get lost in the 2.0 social media generation and beyond.

Well let’s go back in time and compare online marketing to something you will instantly understand… 88mph………..and…..

Online Marketing – Campaigns or Channels?

I want you to think of online marketing as a TV channel. TV channels have a constant stream of content. It’s best when there’s fresh episodes. New shows are always exciting. Repeats tend to make us bored.

Marketing campaigns on the other hand, which are great for launches and excitement, but don’t necessarily have that long term, lifelong relationship mindset built in, tend to have a start and a finish date to them. The nature of a campaign is a lot like a political election. A heap of energy gets thrown into winning the crowd over, then once people have voted, the effort stops. Goal achieved. Campaign over.

But in online marketing, this is now the kiss of death.

Online marketing can no longer be thought of as a marketing campaign. You must think of it like a channel.

You have viewers (traffic) and ratings (sharing).

A marketing channel must stay on the air. If the content stops, the channel goes down and the viewers go watch something else. Your website, your business, will lose its viewers and ratings.

And if no one is watching, no one is talking about you (sharing), then you will slip off the SERP’s (search engine results pages) and disappear quicker than Scott Baio.

Do you need to create all the content yourself?

Short answer – No!

In TV land, they have a thing called syndication. It’s where you buy the rights to someone’s show and air on your channel. Online we call that social media sharing.

People have literally built massive followings by sharing stuff they like. Like minded people become attracted to the short cut of sort through the clutter as someone they know and trust recommends products, services, restaurants etc for them.

So what can you take away from this? Think of your online content like a marketing channel, not a marketing campaign. You don’t have to be 24/7 like a tv channel, but you need to be consistent. Seth Godin writes 2 blogs a day. You may write 2 a month, make a video once a week or produce a white paper once every 6 months. It doesn’t matter what it is. But if you add value to your audience and keep adding fresh episodes people look forward to, they’ll stick with you from season to season, tell others about you in the natural course of their lives and you will build a loyal following.

Online marketing might be fast changing in the way we see it growing up in front of our eyes. But the one thing that remains the same, and will always remain the same, is the human element. The mass psychology. The power of being entertained, educated and informed.

P.S. If you liked this article, share the love! And until next time…Think Big! Act Bold! and Have Fun!

by Scott Groves