Passive Marketing

 

I’m not the best person for direct connections, as I mentioned in a previous post.  Yet, in order to get your name out there, you need to make an impression, and that means marketing.  Marketing is, essentially, selling yourself.  But for years, perhaps from various movies or certain comics (ahem, Dilbert), we have been conditioned into thinking that Marketing is a method of selling poor experiences. 

 

While it’s true that good marketing can sell poor experiences, what makes marketing even better is when it grows from good, quality experiences.  This is what I term passive marketing, as it happens without your active participation.  It’s also called word-of-mouth or viral marketing, and is the holy grail of any website or company that is looking to sell goods and services.  

 

So how do you get this holy grail?  It’s not as hard as you think, though it’s definitely time consuming.  It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen if you do a few simple things: 

 

• Provide a Quality Experience:  This should be a no-brainer.  You need to have something of quality to provide before you can hope to have that quality experience shared.
• Provide Value Beyond the Sale:  If you are part of a community, then you can build your brand within the community by being an active participant.
• Get Connected:  Websites used to be the key, now they are just a requirement.  You need to go beyond the website to provide value and build your brand.  Social networking is a great way to do that.

 

These are just a few of the things you can do to passively build your brand, build your marketing presence, and encourage viral praise and interest in your goods and services.