Marketing From The Theory of Moderation

People are always looking for that easy diet, and similarly, small business owners are always looking for that magic marketing pill, the ONE thing they can do that will help solve all their marketing woes. For the business owners, sadly there is no magic marketing pill, bean or bullet.

Photo Credit Lawrence OP

Aristotle had a theory on living the ‘Good Life’ – ‘Success in Living’ being based on moderation.  By taking a little bit from everything.  We know that success in life can lead to success is business… and success in business can lead to success in life… Not always, but it’s a good start.

If Aristotle is correct about moderation and balance is the key to happiness, then balance and moderation should be used in your marketing plan.

Without the proverbial silver bullet, where does one begin to achieve balance? Every business is different and has different avenues that will be needed to create balance, but for the majority, it all starts here:

Website:  For most businesses, the start of any well-balanced marketing is going, to begin with, a website. The Internet has become so embedded in the consumer purchase consideration process that more than 40% of customers now say they will not buy a brand if they can’t find the right information about it online.

Having a website is just the beginning.  Remember a website is PASSIVE marketing.  Individuals have to search you out to go to your site.  Make sure that you market your site, in and on everything you do.  If you are involved in social media, make sure you are using links from your website on Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to your site.

Traditional Media:  If you have the budget and have done traditional, media in the past, please continue it.  While neither print, radio nor TV is going to give you the ROI that you got a few years ago, they are still the best mediums to broadcast your message to a large number of individuals. Just be a little more selective regarding your target, your message and your budget.  Try to become a little more creative about what you can do, and how you might be able to become more of programming.  We all pay a little more attention to the programming than the commercials…

SEO:   Search Engine Optimization is only going to keep playing a larger role. If your website is passive, marketing SEO is the best way to make your website part of an aggressive pro-active marketing campaign.  SEO is a bit of either art or science depending on if you are a left-brain or right brain.  It is worth taking some classes and expanding your knowledge about how it works and how it has used and applied in websites and blogs.  Depending on what you do a little SEO can go a very long way. Also, setting aside about 30 minutes a week can really do wonders.  If you are in a very competitive industry, it is even more important, but will also take more time and effort from you. Still, in today’s world, it is very important to create balance.

Social Media:   E-mail blasts, AdWords, Facebook Ad’s, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, Google places, etc.  There are several platforms here alone that you must look at from a moderation level to create balance.  All the above are excellent for your business. None are going to save it, and none are going to have you go out of business if you do not do it. By doing a little of all of the above will help you create incredible balance in your marketing

Photo credit Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer

Sometimes marketing can be just like diets.  There’s all these different diet theories, all completely contradictory when most doctors agree that the healthiest advice is just to eat a variety of food in moderate amounts.

While we know all this, and practice it with our clients, we were watching a rerun of West Wing last night and a quote from the character President Bartlett caught my attention:

“ That session this morning with the advisors;  everybody’s got a magic lever they want you to push. I studied economics all my life but in this job only a fool is ever certain. You don’t push any one lever; you wanna push a little on them all.”

From every theory in moderation…