Your Business will Fail Without this “Three-Step Marketing Ladder”
Today, marketing genius Seth Godin (arguably one of the most influential people in the rise of content marketing ideologies during the last few years) posted a great breakdown of the marketing sequence.
Probably worth reviewing at your next marketing meeting (or every marketing meeting)… There’s a three-step ladder:
Awareness
Education
Action
His post explains the differences among each rung of this ladder, but there’s something I noticed…
- Awareness – Advertising/Content Marketing
- Education – Content Marketing
- Action – Copywriting
The online marketing process isn’t just content marketing or PPC or copywriting. Anyone who says you only need one channel is selling you something.
Unfortunately, it’s not in the best interest of marketing gurus (or the anti-gurus who have become so popular in the last few years) to advocate a well-rounded approach to marketing. Many of them are selling their own systems that claim to show buyers how to create profitable businesses based around a single marketing technique.
While these single-technique strategies work for some businesses, the vast, vast majority of business ventures need a rounded approach to be sustainable.
In my own experience, the businesses who embrace the marketing ladder Seth Godin wrote about are the ones who survive when Facebook decides sales posts won’t show up in users’ newsfeeds or when Google changes SEO (again!) or when consumer tastes change and wipe out one of your strongest platforms.
The longview advocated by SMART marketers takes more work, smarter planning, and patience. You’ll have to frequently fight the temptation for short-term wins that prevent long-term growth (like over-spamming your email list for more sales THIS month but violates the trust of your readers). But if you do these things, you’ll have a business that lasts, that can change, and that can adapt to a rapidly changing market.
See Seth’s Blog: A three-step marketing ladder.