The difference between passive and active marketing.
The golden rule of marketing: pitch yourself to your customers as you would like them to pitch themselves to you, says Philp Kotler. And that’s right, nothing could be simpler and more spontaneous.
Marketing a small and medium-sized business is more complicated than a few brochures or collecting business cards.
And today it’s not even enough to have a website, hoping to be displayed in the Google Serp. Do you think this is the best way to get customers? Right? You’re wrong.
Building a website and indexing it as well as possible for crawlers is time-consuming and complex work, and you will be surprised to learn that it is passive marketing.
Why passive? Because customers will have to land on your landing page and contact you.
But consider that this strategy, which is based on proper planning SEO (search engine optimization) e Content Marketing, is fundamental and strategic in the medium and long term.
There is another, much more immediate way, which is not to wait for customers, but to find them, and that is active marketing.
Entrepreneurs and companies both use these marketing models to launch their products and services in the market.
Knowing the different faces of marketing and their benefits will help small business managers establish an appropriate marketing plan.
Let’s start with active marketing: what it is
Active marketing is a fundamental element of “doing business”: it requires actions on the part of the small business.
This type of marketing is intentional and targeted; it is an efficient strategy because it allows us to frame, from a careful market analysis, what the market needs in the medium to long term: that is, what the market might need in 3 or 4 years’ time.
The moment a company decides to create a product or deliver a service it also involves the marketing staff in the development of this product or service.
It is essential first to understand whether this product is in demand in the market; to understand whether this product or service is already in the market; which competitors are producing or delivering it, and at what price.
These elements are used to understand whether it makes sense to produce this new product or deliver this new service.
After that, marketing goes down even further: once we have mapped the market, identified competitors and products/services in the market we will be able to identify the features our product or service must have.
There is no point in reproducing the same product or service already on the market-the products will have already been tested and will probably enjoy a good reputation.
Identifying the characteristics of the product or service will help us differentiate ourselves from the competition and create a new niche market, with much better chances of becoming a leader and generating leads and sales.
Active marketing requires some originality, a willingness to step out of the comfort zone and start engaging our audience.
I social media have been a driving force in motivating entrepreneurs to take action, and we applaud those who have accepted this challenge.
The other side of marketing: passive marketing
Passive marketing is the opposite of active marketing. Passive marketing can be regarded as placement marketing in that it is about being in the right place at the right time. It is a thoughtful, anticipatory and practical type of marketing.
Passive marketing occurs in an economic environment where demand is greater than supply, so the availability of goods is greater to the products offered by the market, which was the case until the last century. It is easy to see that with excess demand over supply implies that any good/service will “sell itself.”
Passive marketing is the marketing I associate, overwhelmingly, with the Italian micro SME. In my 25 years of work I have met a few hundred entrepreneurs, belonging to the micro and small business segment.
Often times the person I met had inherited the business from his father or family, and wondered: how come after 20 years this company that was operating perfectly, with the right margins in the market, was now not doing well.
This is already an important element, because the world, especially in the last decade, has changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet.
Today, the possible customer, thanks to the Internet, can find all the information he wants.
The famous “zero point”-that is, the moment of purchase decision-making-no longer takes place in the store, or in front of the salesperson, but occurs a priori, in total autonomy in front of a PC or smartphone: it is the result of careful, deep and detailed online research.
There is no point in selling products on the cheap; a customer expects more. Businesses today need to attract and engage the consumer with a complete experience, both online and offline.
Active and passive marketing can both be very productive, but with two extremely different logics and timelines. Both require you to know your customers at a deep level.
If you want to communicate clearly, you need to know your typical Customer, which is often also referred to as the Buyer Personas.
You have to empathize with the customer, as Philp Kolter says: understand what is interesting to them and why they buy what you are selling.
Is traditional marketing still effective?
Times have changed, users have changed. Before the advent of digital, the consumer was considered a “productively” passive element, whereas today’s modern digital consumer is much more demanding, and companies and marketers must take a more nuanced approach to connecting with them.
In fact, thanks to search engines, the user can find out everything: the various comments or reviews, how the product or service is positioned, what the costs are, what the reception time is, what the after-sales services are.
It is clear that the consumer has so much information at his or her disposal, and, that the “zero point,” the purchase decision point occurs well before when we actually encounter it.
Probably the customer who enters our store, or buys our product online, is because he or she has already done a careful analysis first. This is a fundamental element that every entrepreneur must take into consideration: the web can no longer be ignored.
You have to start talking about yourself, you have to develop another kind of communication: the creative kind, the kind of dialogue, sharing and transparency.
How to do it. Here are our pills:
- Listen to the audience interested in your product: pay attention to their demands and needs
- Tell a story that taps into your audience’s values and needs; create valuable content, explaining whatever it takes to meet their expectations
- Work on trust and transparency to enhance your brand reputation.
The future will require more dynamic changes as events and customer attitudes change. It will require a more holistic rethinking of how the story is presented to the customer.
And, are you ready for that future?
Want to learn more about various marketing techniques and figure out which one is most effective for your business?
Read our articles in the Marketing Strategy section