August 20, 2018
Proactive vs. Reactive Marketing
Sit Back And Watch What Happens or Chase It? It’s Up To You.
When it comes to digital marketing, you may not have had it described like the title suggests, “Proactive vs. Reactive” marketing, but when you’re trying to reach your target audience, both are important. Let’s dig in.
Reactive Marketing requires something specific– it requires the potential client to be looking for you already. Reactive marketing clients already understand their need for your product or services. Not only that, but they are searching for you already. You put the marketing in place, like Search Engine Optimization, or Pay Per Click, and they react– or respond to it.
Proactive Marketing is different. Proactive marketing helps unearth potential clients who may not even know they have a need for your services at the moment. I’ll give you an example: A year or so ago I was using Facebook, and there was this ad and video for something called a Nato Mount. It’s basically a magnetic car mount for your telephone for your car, which is now a necessity in the State of Georgia because apparently we can be trusted to hold a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a large drink in our hands while driving our cars, but we can’t be trusted to hold onto our phones– but I digress. In any event, I didn’t really think I needed one of these things, or I would have bought one years ago. The seat or the cupholder was a fine place for my phone, or so I thought. I wasn’t looking for a phone mount. If I was, I’d have googled it or amazon’d it.
Then entered Facebook.
I saw this pic and this vid of the thing, and thought, “that might work in my car.” I drive an old car and it has some unique features– like no heating or AC vents on the dash– so lots of mounts wouldn’t work. It looked great, so I ordered. In fact, they had such a great upsell deal on them, I got 8 of them, really cheap– and they work AWESOME. I’d buy one again, and will likely in the days ahead. But I didn’t know I needed one. It took the FB ad to even generate the idea. Nato Mounts stuck this awesome piece of advertising in front of me, that advertising generated the idea in my head, and then I bought. It’s kind of like a road sign stuck in my face as I drive down Hwy 20– “Wow there’s a McDonalds. I hadn’t thought about it, but now that I see the sign– I’m hungry!” That’s proactive marketing. You stick your advertising in front of people who don’t even know they really need your services, and your ad generates the desire and the idea. Facebook and social media in general, does that well. Email marketing can do this well too, however the hardest thing there is the absolute glut of information that comes through an inbox– it’s so hard to get through that to get someone to open the email.
So what about you? Is your marketing proactive or reactive? Primarily one or the other? The truth is, you need both. There are people out there who don’t even have an idea about you. They need the idea. Then there are others who are already looking for you. Your advertising needs to be their response.
Make It Loud
