The Billboard Approach to Marketing
Imagine me walking up to you and saying to you “Hey my name is Larry Snow and I just wrote this fantastic book on Executive Protection, the best ever, and you have to buy it.” What are the chances of you buying the book? Slim to none, right? For the obvious reasons: You don’t know who I am, you don’t know what I do, and you don’t know my background. In other words, you and I have no connections to one another. This is what I call the billboard approach.
This example above might have worked about 20 years ago, but with the advent of the World Wide Web and more recently the explosion of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn it has now become known as SPAM – an unsolicited message. Marketing today, especially on social media networks is no longer push, push, push. Social media has given the power back to the consumer.
Using the example above, you as the consumer, if you’re remotely interested in this wonderful EP book, would have done a few Google and social network searches, or emailed a few friends asking if you heard of me and what I’m all about or asked about the book. But a significant majority of you will just blow me off outright, and those that do the searches will find out I’m a social media and branding consultant and will find it very suspicious that I’ve written a book on EP. Basically, I’m 0 for 2 and no sales for my book.
And yet time and again I see EP businesses and specialists using the billboard approach on social media networks. “Buy my” [fill in the blank] – training, book, e-book, super-galactic, ninja warrior course – just a link to buy and nothing else.
The Shotgun Approach to Marketing
What’s even worse is pasting the same link in every social media forum, group, and page that is even remotely related to Executive Protection. I’m quite certain that if you are like me, you belong to several groups on social media networks, and when you check in or get the notification emails all you see is the same person posting the same link over and over again – highly annoying and subject to quick deletion. This is what I call the shotgun approach. The buckshot scatters and hopefully, you get a few clicks or a buy.
