There’s a quote we love - ’don’t wait for an opportunity, create it’ and this couldn’t be more true for your marketing. In the early days of Collabosaurus, our marketing strategy was a big ball of different-coloured play dough meshed together and we was constantly hoping new bits would stick.
Opportunities were coming at us from all angles, we were split testing email campaigns, social ads, publicity call outs, guest blogging – everything. We had to quickly adjust our approach [which was saying ‘yes’ to everything] so that there was a balanced mix of proactive and reactive strategy.
But how do you get ‘proactive’ with your strategies? Your marketing should aim to be about 80% proactive and 20% reactive, so we’ve outlined two examples below ...
Getting in the media to build credibility & exposure is your goal! As a side note, you should check out our PR & Media Ebook HERE.
Reactive Scenario: you’re signed up to Sourcebottle and receive a call out that is seeking comment on a topic you’re passionate about. You stop what you’re doing to quickly formulate a response.
Proactive Scenario: you pitch your angles and news stories to press! It’s what publicists do on a daily basis, and there’s no reason why you can’t too. In the process you’re building valuable relationships.
Let’s say your goal is to build your email list and a webinar is the route you want to take ...
Reactive Scenario: a business friend contacts you about a webinar they’re running and want you to be involved as a guest presenter and promoter. This is great, however you lose some of the control and it mightn’t fit into your schedule well.
Proactive Scenario: you schedule a date for the webinar, plan out the promotion and hustle a great co-presenter. You maintain control over the outcome, your schedule and messaging.
So, how does one become more proactive in their marketing? Here are our top 3 tips!
Marketing for the sake of marketing and ‘general exposure’ won’t be very fruitful. Set a clear goal – like growing your email list, building engagement on your Instagram, filling a webinar or running a killer event. Doing so will help A LOT with the next tip …
For every opportunity that comes your way, assess the time it’s going to take you and whether or not the exercise will translate into achieving your goals from point #1. If it doesn’t – ditch it! If saying ‘no’ completely freaks you out, we have email templates for that in the Collabohub.
One of the most valuable things you will ever do is keep a time diary for one week. You will see what activities are wasting your time and how much energy you are putting into growing your business. It’s a great idea to give this a go, and dedicate 2 hours on a Monday toward proactive activities and 30 minutes on a Thursday to reactive.