To outsiders and even some business owners, Marketing is often viewed as a sexy field – you know, that flashy ad or a high-profile campaign can transform a small business into a goliath overnight. Where marketing generates hordes of customers that come banging on a business’ proverbial door at every hour of the day.
While there are cases where such tactics yield immediate results, the reality of marketing, especially for smaller businesses, is that it often involves a lot of mundane operational tactics that have to get done. Indeed, a significant portion of this is about fundamental, often overlooked tasks that lay the groundwork for sustainable growth. It won’t garner any headlines but these are the kinds of things that are essential for long-term success.
What do we mean by this? Here are a few examples.
In Praise of Un-Sexy Content
Let’s start with content development. Contrary to what many people think, crafting compelling content isn’t generally about producing videos that go viral or developing a blog that gets immediate attention. It’s much more about creating valuable resources that resonate with your audience and building trust and credibility over time. I often give an example about blogs that we produce 3 times a month. None of them get a crazy volume of views. So, why do we do it? For three reasons primarily:
- So that we can post on social media and stay top-of-mind among our network.
- So that we can use the blogs to cross-link to key pages of our website, which is helpful for SEO.
- So that we can establish our authority in a particular area and build traffic from search (people querying different topic areas in marketing).
If we get a blog or a video that we produce to go viral, great. But I think oftentimes there’s too much emphasis placed on hitting a home run – which can often involve the temptation to overstate, exaggerate, lie or misrepresent something – when it’s better to just be a steady producer.
SEO, The Unsung Hero of Traffic
And then, how about SEO? While it may lack the glitz and glamour of a flashy ad campaign, SEO is the backbone of online visibility. Indeed, if you can rank highly in organic search results for the various topics that your customers are searching for, you often don’t need paid advertising as a business. The issue? It’s often very meticulous work. It takes a lot of attention to detail and does require you to have some knowledge of how the Google algorithm works. It also takes a lot of man-hours, either on your part as a business owner or if you use an agency. But the payoff can be monumental as your organic traffic steadily increases over time.
The Steady Email Campaign: Nothing Flashy, Good ROI
A lot of marketing is simply nurturing existing relationships. This is where email comes into play. Sending regular newsletters or an occasional update on a sale or new product may result in immediate conversions, but the point is much more that you keep your brand top of mind for an audience who already knows you. And as that audience keeps growing, you get more and more sales. That means regardless of whether your audience is buying directly from an email now (which signals their readiness) or waiting until the time is right, you win either way if you can keep nurturing them along with great content or relevant offers.
Social Media Doesn’t Have to Go Viral to Be Good
If you ask the average business that’s not in retail or an area where you might see more spontaneous/impulse purchases, you may hear grumbling that social media isn’t worth it from a resource perspective. Even big companies have started to abandon platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) from the organic side.
The issue: To get views on your posts from followers or your network, your content on nearly every platform you have has to be considered “viral” (by that social platform), which means it gets audiences to either comment on it or share it. Likes are great but they don’t do much for a brand or a company such as Facebook.
This can lead to lots of frustration with an agency or even your employee who runs social media. I think though, the viral focus misses the point. For one it’s unrealistic, as few companies can churn out viral post after viral post. Also, it’s not about amassing followers or chasing engagement metrics per se. To us, it’s much more about consistency, authenticity, and using social media as a tool to reinforce your brand’s identity and values, as well as stay top of mind among your network. Those impressions matter regardless of interaction. They reinforce what your brand is about and, in a sense, deliver that value for the time when someone in your network needs your products or services.
Conclusion
So, why invest time and resources in these seemingly mundane marketing activities? Because they lay the foundation for sustainable growth and long-term success. It’s like building a sturdy offensive or defensive line in football. They do the blocking and tackling needed for the team to move down the field. Sure, it’s great to put up points with a superstar quarterback and great receivers, but without solid protection, they’re vulnerable to sack after sack. The goal, after all, isn’t scoring. It’s winning. And that means supporting all the foundations of marketing – sexy or otherwise.
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