Schubert Solutions

When I was younger, I had a favorite tree.  It was a fallen down river birch with bark that peeled back and revealed tons of squiggly lines embedded in the wood.  Every day, for however long that fallen tree stayed in my backyard, I would sit on the ground and analyze the squiggles.  I told some of my friends that the squiggles were hieroglyphs and I was the only one who could read them.  They believed me because they didn’t know any better, and because I knew those tree squiggles by heart so I made the story very convincing.  I would read the squiggles off of the wood like they had some sort of mystic omniscience–but I was making it all up.

Oh, yeah, there’s also a totally relevant point to this nostalgia.  It’s about marketing!

The Tree Squiggle Readers

There are marketing gurus for every marketing avenue.  Social media whiz kids.  SEO geniuses.  Perfect slogan writers.  They know their marketing avenues well, and they’re very convincing when they espouse the virtues of this or that platform, so many business owners easily believe their spiels.  And, unlike me and my tree, most of these gurus actually know what they’re talking about.  The only problem is:  they’re reading off of a single tree.

The SEO geniuses will pronounce that the key to building your business is relaunching your site with better SEO so that customers can find you when they’re searching Google.  All of the social media whiz kids will say that SEO is less important than keeping up with your Facebook presence and making sure to respond to every customer on Twitter.  While these strategies can have some success, the best marketing strategies are run across multiple platforms–social media, SEO, content marketing, slogans, billboards, TV commercials, etc.

Cross-Platform Marketing

Want to stop missing the forest for the trees?  You’ll need to branch out your marketing efforts into a host of different venues.  Build your brand recognition and you’ll build customer trust.  The main reason many companies get caught up in single avenue marketing is that they are too busy to bother with multiple platforms.  If that’s you, your best bet is to take a look at the marketing platforms below and decide 3-5 options that will work for your company.  Then, whether you employ them yourself or delegate the task to a marketing guru, you can rest assured that your company isn’t focusing on a single tree.

• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Your Web Presence
• Article/Content Marketing
• Direct Mail Letters and E-mail Newsletters
• Running an Informative Company Blog
• Write a Guest Blog for a Popular Related Blog
• Sharing Marketing White Papers
• Pay per Click Web Advertising (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, etc.)
• Advertise Services on Craigslist
• Attend Networking Events
• Host a Networking Event or Customer Appreciation Event
• Rent Convention Booths and Give Away Swag
• Television Advertising
• Radio Advertising
• Magazine/Newspaper Advertising
• Post Business Cards or Flyers at Popular Lunch Spots or Community Centers