One thing that we teach our business coaching clients here at The Thrivetime Show is the purpose of a three-legged marketing stool. I have heard this concept over and over again. After all, I teach this concept, so one might think I probably know the theory fairly well. But, as week after week continues to demonstrate, I am continuing to learn things I thought I already knew. A three-legged marketing stool in your business plan has three legs for a very specific and strategic reason.
We implement a three-legged marketing stool for our business coaching clients’ business plans for many reasons. First, we choose three effective (notice the word effective in this sentence) forms of marketing because too many is simply not as rewarding as it could be. For example, let’s say you choose to have 25 different forms of marketing avenues to grow your business. The problem with this lies in the amount of funding to allocate to each marketing channel. Thus, you never fully maximize the return for any of these marketing efforts because your funding is being dispersed and allocated into too many different areas. Therefore, it makes it harder to compete in each arena.
Now, on the contrary, it is not wise to only focus on one form of marketing or advertising either. It is common for people to want to do too many forms of marketing. However, it is less common for someone to only choose one channel to market to buyers. To be completely transparent, I never actually thought about the consequences of only having one form of marketing because no one consciously or purposely only chooses or focuses on one. Although your focus may shift with the season, you must always be running three forms of marketing or three legs that your business is able to sustainably and equally stand upon.
When you set yourself up for success by using three equally effective marketing channels for your business, you are less likely to have a mental, spiritual, physical, emotional or cognitive breakdown when, notice I said when, one of those marketing channels fail you.
Let’s use Google reviews as an example. Google reviews should be a huge part of your marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter who you are or what industry you are in; Google reviews matter. Because Google reviews are so important, you may falsely think you have no consequences to face if that was your sole focus? Clay told us this week that he predicts YouTube will surpass Google entirely in a short amount of time. This is because users will spend more time on YouTube, especially with the upcoming trend of YouTube T.V. What could happen if you put all of your marketing efforts in the basket of Google reviews and you never consider any form of social media, mailers, calls, email communication or any other form of advertising for you customers? Ultimately, you are at the grace of Google and Google alone with the hope that your business will grow.
Just recently, I had a business coaching client in Houston, Texas call to say Google reviews were currently not working. Briefly thinking my client was pulling my leg, I checked for myself. Sure enough, it was not working on mobile devices and no one was able to leave a review. I tried every business I could possibly think of and was unable to leave a review for any local or non-local businesses. Quickly, we found out that it was a technical difficulty that was quickly resolved because Google is an efficient and proactive machine. But what if Bruno’s only marketing strategy was Google reviews? What if one day, Google just decides to take all of a company’s Google reviews away?
When you set yourself up for success by using three equally effective marketing channels for your business, you are less likely to have a mental, spiritual, physical, emotional or cognitive breakdown when, notice I said when, one of those marketing channels fail you. I always knew the theory behind the three-legged marketing stool. However, I never actually stopped to think about one of the systems failing because I have been fortunate enough thus far to be sheltered from this type of disaster. Thankfully, I now completely understand the utter importance of making sure a marketing strategy is implemented using all three legs. When one of those legs fail, there is no need to panic because two legs can be sustainable until we formulate a new plan.
