Marketing: Leverage What's Working
In a long blog, Duct Tape Marketing founder, John Jantsch, lays out a comprehensive plan and tool kit for a marketing strategy he calls "channel leveraging."
He starts by listing the 16 marketing channels available today, noting that about half of them developed in the last 10 years. Referrals are there, of course, as is email marketing, SEO, and other familiar channels. But also on the list are things like "Partner Marketing" and "Influencer Marketing" that most remodelers have never heard about and even fewer have tried.
His thesis, which he calls "channel leverage," sounds like common sense: It's easier to leverage what's working than to explore something new. The problem is that most business owners don't know what's working, and even when they do, they may not think of it as marketing. Referrals are a good example. Most remodelers get a lot of referrals, but they have no strategy to increase the number and quality of referrals. Consequently, they don't employ what Jantsch calls "cross-channel leverage" — for instance, using demonstrations or speaking engagements to enhance referrals.
The rest of the post is devoted to examples and tools needed to implement channel-leverage in your business.