Active or Passive Marketing: Which Strategy Works Best for You?

Active or Passive Marketing: Which Strategy Works Best for You?

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 113 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, do you need active or passive marketing strategies? Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe a little bit of both. Stay tuned. We're going to chat all about it.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners.

CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 113 of the business development podcast. It is an absolute honor to be on with you guys today.

Today, we have an absolutely awesome show coming up. I want to chat all about, do you need an active or passive marketing strategy? We're going to delve a little deep into it today. It's something that's come up multiple times, and I think there's some aspects to it that we just want to touch on. So, we're going to chat all about that today, but before we get into it, I wanted to give you guys an amazing show update.

So, we had yet another record day last Friday. Topping out at 1, 471 downloads in a single day. We are rapidly approaching that 1, 500 plus mark for a single day show. And I am absolutely honored. I'm absolutely honored to be here with you guys and to be able to do this show. And I just want you to know, my Rockstar community, I appreciate you immensely.

I appreciate you guys. My listeners, my amazing expert guests, my amazing sponsors. You guys are all just absolutely absolute rockstars. I appreciate you immensely. The show could not have grown as fast as it has grown. This is also our 13 month episode, which is super cool. We're we're on 13 months of the shows that we have passed the one year mark.

We are now heading into the year plus, which is super cool. And this journey has just been amazing. And it's been amazing because of you. It's been amazing because of the, the messages that I get from you guys every week, talking about how we've helped you, how your company is growing, how, when you've enacted these lessons, it's changed your business.

That is what this is all about. It's about educating and inspiring and making stuff like that happen, and it can't happen without you guys listening and taking action in your business and in your life. And I appreciate it immensely, and I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for believing in us, for trusting us, for coming back week over week, month over month, and now for an entire year plus.

We could not do it without your support. So where are we standing today? We are at 136, 270 downloads. We are 13 months into the adventure that is the Business Development Podcast. And if you love this show, we need your support. I have some favors to ask of each and every one of you. One, if you guys could go on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, leave us a lovely Five star rating and a follow.

It really helps us to organically grow this show. So it makes a huge difference guys. You wouldn't believe it, but honestly, hopping on, leaving that rating, it can really be the difference between somebody finding the show or not finding the show. And so if you love this show and you come back week over week, we need your support.

Give us a follow, give us a rating, hopefully five stars on your platform of choice. The next thing you can do is tell a friend, colleague, or family member. And better yet, just share from your platform of choice one of your favorite episodes with them. That's a cool feature on most most podcast platforms.

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We love to see it, or even if you get a chance, we would love it. If you would leave us a review on Apple podcasts. So lots of ways to connect with our show, lots of ways to help us, and we would appreciate your support. immensely. I wanted to give a gigantic thank you to Jan Hnat. He is the founder and owner of Mango VA, and he came on and taught us all about the power of virtual assistants.

That's episode 112. If you have not had a chance to listen to it, Jan's story is awesome. He he owned a Popeyes franchise, and that eventually migrated into B2B sales, which migrated into him literally. starting a VA company, which is absolutely crazy. It was a lot of fun. Yan is really cool. I had a great time interviewing him.

Go check out that show. It's episode 112. It's been extremely popular, so maybe you've already checked it out, but if you haven't go back one episode, episode 112, harnessing the power of virtual assistants. All right. Well, thank you so much for your support. We could not do this show without you. So let's get into it.

What is active and passive marketing? I think before we hop into today's show, we have to give just a little definition about what these are. And so I'm going to talk a little bit to them. So, Active marketing is what I promote heavily on the business development podcast. It is what my business Capital Business Development does.

And frankly, it is the most effective way to do business to business marketing. And so. Active marketing is something where we are actually directly getting in touch. We're targeting the right people were identifying the companies, the locations, the individuals who can actually buy our product at these companies, and we're targeting them directly in a very direct way were either.

Reaching out to them directly on LinkedIn and then starting a soft introduction. Then we're following up with a direct email or phone call. And we are doing that on a consistent basis, week over week, just once a week until we either get our meeting or we disqualify the prospect. The goal with this is always to get a face to face meeting and start building a real human relationship.

So that is what active marketing is all about. Yes, it's a little more involved. Yes, you can't do it on a very broad amount, right? Like it's, it's very targeted. So you need to make sure that you're reaching out to individual people instead of a mass shootout at the world shotgun approach and hope for the best.

So it's a more targeted approach. However, It is a more cost effective approach, and it is a more effective approach overall to long term business relationships, or to something that is going to lead into an actual sale for your company. Passive marketing is more of like a brand recognition strategy, or a big shotgun approach, and this works really, really well in B2C.

And so, Whenever you're selling a product or service to an individual, and you need that big, broad, shotgun approach to reach as many individuals as possible, that is where a passive marketing strategy works really well, and so we all utilize passive marketing strategies at all of our organizations, because No company can work without a little bit of both.

And so ultimately a passive strategy is like a really great website that leads to lead generation. It might be a digital marketing campaign that leads to a whole bunch of new prospects or interest in your company. It might be your online store. It might be your presence on LinkedIn. It might be your social media campaigns.

It's anywhere where you are massively marketing to people, but You have to get them when they're ready to buy your product or service. This, this also is Google SEO. This is, this is all sorts. It encompasses basically any type of digital marketing that you may do is a passive marketing campaign. So obviously these are all really important because Your website is absolutely critical.

A social media strategy is absolutely critical. And it doesn't matter whether you are a B2B business or a B2C business. These are absolutely critical. So I am not knocking either of these things at the end of the day, they are both incredibly valuable in your organization and it is used at. every single organization.

The important thing, and we'll get into that later, is maybe when you use them and what ratio that you use them at in your organization. So now that we have done a really good introduction, I think, to what active marketing is and what passive marketing is, I want to get in to a little story. I had a great conversation with a friend this week who is launching an app that will connect individuals and businesses that need their services.

And then we got on to the topic of active and passive strategies to achieve his goals. And I thought that this was a really, really cool case study and one that hadn't really come up yet on the show. And it was worth just having a discussion. And so this friend, he's built an app and what it's ultimately going to do is connect.

Contractors, individual contractors with companies that are looking to hire them. And he asked me, he said, Kelly, like, what's the best way to go about? You know, we're rolling this out. Who do we target first? How does this work? And he was kind of suggesting potentially doing an active marketing campaign on the companies, which actually makes a lot of sense.

But I started talking to him and the more that we got into it, I said, Do you have anything to sell to these companies until you have, you know, a big list of contractors on your, on your platform? And he's like, well, no, not really. And I said, well, then that being the case, I think what you need to do is have a really, really massive B2C strategy you know, a passive marketing strategy where you are just getting the word out that your app even exists.

And then once you, you know, on board a whole bunch of individual, individual contractors, you know, let's say you got 100 or 150, then take that to a company because now you have something to sell to them. Now you have real value and you needed to create that value first. And so it was a really fun one where ultimately his product is both.

It's B2C. And B2B, it's both active and passive. And it was just a really cool kind of idea. But you know, the, the end of this conversation really came down to what he needs to do is get as many individuals utilizing his app before he then takes that to industry and starts marketing that to large scale organizations who may need these contractor services.

But It was funny because he does ultimately need both, but he needs one first and then another. And so what my recommendation to him was in this case was to use a passive marketing strategy at first to build a whole bunch of brand recognition around his really awesome new app. And then, you know, after maybe six months of doing this and really creating a great following of people, having a whole bunch of people utilizing this app, then using a B2B targeted strategy.

To reach out to individuals at large corporations who may find this app incredibly valuable when sourcing their next contractors. So it was a really cool opportunity to have that experience with him and really walk through the various steps that he could go through, but. That was ultimately where we landed, but it really just led me to realize that, like, no matter what you do, you ultimately do need both.

And sometimes, in his particular case, you need both, but at different times, right? Like, it makes way more sense for him to have a whole bunch of people that he can ultimately market to these organizations, than to go to the organizations and say, Hey, we're building this app. We don't have anybody, we can't really benefit you yet, but are you interested?

Right? The value proposition just isn't there. And so in this particular case, he has to use a B2C strategy or a passive marketing strategy at first, just at first to really get a whole bunch of people on board, and once it starts to get a life of its own, then he can market that he has something of value to pitch.

To you know, an organization that may need those contractor supports. So it was it was a very interesting conversation and it really got me thinking and what I started to think about this was, I think we need to have another show on active and passive marketing. And so that's why we're here today.

I thought I would just give you guys an idea of why I chose this topic and think it's a really important time to have it. Let's just talk a little bit about who might need various strategies. We'll talk a little bit about where they're used and who it fits best. Okay, so you need an active marketing strategy if long term relationships are important.

This is why in B2B an active marketing strategy is just it's absolutely critical because most B to B relationships. Result in repeat business, long term relationships over time that lead to mutually beneficial relationships. And so if relationships are important to your business, you really need to focus in on an active marketing strategy to start to establish those relationships early to focus on the connection right at the beginning and work at building that connection over time.

Whenever trust needs to be established, okay, trust is absolutely critical in any type of large scale sale or anything where, you know, a good amount of money is changing hands, where there's potentially a lot of risk if it doesn't go right. Trust is absolutely. Critical to establish trust is developed over time.

It doesn't happen in just one interaction. You don't just meet somebody and trust them. It takes multiple interactions with somebody to build trust over time. And by the way, multiple positive interactions, by the way, I should really preface this multiple positive interactions. So that's why I like business relationships.

They take time to establish. It takes somebody to reach out and start to establish a relationship. Then it typically takes a trial order where somebody can then provide that service show that that service can be done competently, effectively and as promised, and then over time, as those things happen, you start to develop a trust between that organization or that individual, but it does not happen immediately at an active marketing process where you were really focused on building a personal relationship with somebody, but By introducing a real person and building trust over time through, you know, various interactions, that is where big deals happen.

That's how the big deals happen. That's how the repeat business happens over time is that you build trust and a relationship that leads to mutually beneficial relationships and repeat business. Like I said before, if your product or service cost is a little on the higher side, right? This is something where you're not just going to like hop on the internet and be like, Yeah, I'm in.

I'm just going to click buy now, right? If you're, if you're spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on a product or service, you're going to want to talk with somebody. You're going to want to, like I said, start to establish trust, start to really understand, you know, what the pitch is, that you have somebody in that organization that you can reach out to and build that direct relationship with.

And so Anything where there's like a higher cost value when you're spending, I would say like anything more than probably about 5, 000 on a service. You're going to really want to start to try to establish that face to face relationship and start to build that trust so that you can get that repeat business over time.

And any time that you ultimately need to get ahead of the customer need, right, active marketing process isn't about waiting for your customer to find you. It's about finding your customer ahead of their product or service need. This is the best way to sell bar none. You need to make introductions to companies who can buy your product and service specifically people who would be interested in buying your product or service or who make that buying decision and make an introduction well ahead of when they have that need.

I've had customers at, you know, At various organizations that I've worked at, who literally reached out to me two years later and said, Kelly, you know what, I've had your brochure on my desk for two years. I didn't need you when you dropped it off, but I need it now. And they wouldn't have done that if I hadn't have got ahead of the need if I hadn't have introduced that product ahead of the need.

So It's one of those things where if you can get ahead of the need, you're available when the customer needs you, as opposed to them having to search you out, you're essentially short cutting the process. You're saying, Hey, when you have this need, call me, you've met me. We've already established a relationship and I will look after you.

You're getting, you're building that trust ahead of the need. And what that ultimately does is it gives you more opportunity and better opportunity over time. So taking the time. Getting ahead of the need through an active marketing process, introducing prospects to your products or services ahead of their need is just going to make you more effective and frankly, more profitable over time.

Active marketing is the most effective strategy in B2B applications for closing more business period. It just. is. So if you need to build relationships, if you are looking for repeat business, if you were selling high dollar value items, if trust is important in what you sell, you need to take an active marketing stance.

Now let's talk about a passive marketing strategy. You need a passive marketing strategy if you are primarily a B2C company that sells to end user individuals, right? This is about broad scope. This is about reaching a ton of people. Usually Individuals and not business. Yes, it can be business too, but B2C is primarily individuals, personally.

Whether it be like, let's say, you're selling shoes, or you're selling an app that helps them in their day to day stuff, like fitness app or something like that. Or if you're selling, right, like a shirt or clothing, like this is, this is a perfect example of B2C. And where do you see these ads? Do you see these ads?

It's everywhere on your Facebook, on your LinkedIn, on the internet, all over the place, on Amazon, whatever, it's everywhere. Social media, you are getting bombarded with B2C ads, okay? That's where B2C, frankly, is king. With active marketing, it would simply cost too much to reach enough people far and wide in the way that B2C can.

Through a B2B or an active marketing process, right? Active marketing is about a targeted Individual process. We are getting to the right people, but once again, this limits our target list or the people that we can ultimately get in touch with. B2C or passive marketing is great. If you are trying to build brand recognition, we're all doing a passive marketing strategy, right?

Hopefully you have a website. Hopefully you have a website that makes you look like a 20 story skyscraper, right? That that's what websites are in 2024. They are literally your 1980s 20 story skyscraper. That's what a website is. You can build it and look as big and awesome as you want to look. And so a website is amazing for this.

And what is a website? It's a passive marketing strategy. It's also an information strategy, but ultimately your goal is to drive people to your website to build interest in what you do so that hopefully one day they will reach out to you and say, Hey, this looks awesome. We want to take a look at this or we want to discuss your services or products with you, right?

A website is the. Best passive marketing strategy for most businesses. Almost everybody has to have one on some level to drive business. So we're all doing passive marketing, but we're typically doing it through our website. Okay. But we also do it through social media, right? We know this, whether you're B2B or B2C, we are doing massive social media campaigns.

But what is a social media campaign? It's a passive marketing strategy. And so, with social media, our goal is to get brand recognition. It's to get our word out there. It's to introduce people. It's to shout our companies from their rooftops and let everybody know what awesome stuff we're doing, right? But social media is a passive marketing strategy, okay?

What else is a passive marketing strategy? Radio ads, TV ads, digital marketing. Google SEO, Google AdWords. These are all passive marketing strategies to try to get people to find you when they are at their point of need, right? You're getting them when they need you. The problem with this is you are getting them at the worst possible moment.

And you would best hope. That they find you first because they're going to find you and everybody else at the same time, which leads to confusion, which leads to hard buying decisions. Like the problem with a passive marketing strategy is you have to get them on their worst day and they have to find you.

This is specifically if you're hoping to sell, right? Remember, a passive marketing strategy also has this double edged goal of brand recognition. This is critical. Brand recognition is absolutely critical. Building your brand is. Absolutely critical and a passive marketing strategy is the way to do this.

But remember, brand building is not selling. Brand building is not selling. They are two completely different things. Can they overlap? And could you potentially sell something because you built your brand? Absolutely. That is the longterm goal, but it is not sales, right? You know this, right? If you've done a passive marketing strategy, you've done a digital ad campaign.

You may have had thousands of impressions, but how many sales did it lead to? Probably not many, because frankly, it's just not that effective or it's not as effective as an active marketing strategy. And I'll be honest, I've gone down this rabbit hole too, right? Like the reality is when I started capital, even knowing better, I still focus pretty heavily on passive marketing strategies that frankly just burnt my money up.

And so we have to be really cognizant, I think of how we are spending our dollars. Right. We are either spending our dollars on something that is effective, or we are spending our dollars on something that is ineffective. And we have to make sure that whatever we are spending or whatever our goals are for that ad spend, that we are getting the results we are hoping for.

Right. And I'm sorry, but digital marketing or ad spend on like social campaigns to try to sell, unless you are in B2C. Is just not going to be that effective for your organization. And so it's important that if you only have a limited ad budget, that all of your ad budget is going to something that is actually going to close more business for you, right?

And so it's important that we're evaluating all of our ad spend, always. Whether it be on an active marketing process, or a passive marketing process, to make sure that we are getting the best value for our dollars over time. So let's just recap that for you guys. An active marketing process. You need an active marketing process.

If you are looking to build long term repeat business with your customers, if you're looking to build trust, if relationships are important, if you want to target the right people at an organization who can actually buy your product or service, if you want to Book more meetings and get in front of people and actually close more business.

You need to do this with an active marketing process. So this is really great. If you're in business to business, if you sell products or services to another organization, I want you to spend. 80 percent of your ad budget on an active marketing process, spend the remaining 20 on your passive marketing process.

100%. You still need both, but this is the ratio that you need in business to business. You need an 80 percent active marketing approach. To a 20 percent passive marketing approach. This approach over time, you can maybe blend it out and see, maybe go to like a 30, 70, but the reality is, is that over time, this is going to lead to more business and better long term relationships for your business to business.

Brand. If you sell to individuals, if you sell a product or you sell services, but your products and services are sold to end users or an individual, just you, right? Right. Not your company. You, this is a really great space to do a passive marketing approach. And once again, I'm going to flip it on its head.

And I'm going to say 80 percent passive marketing or B2C to 20% Active marketing where you're targeting individuals specifically, but this passive marketing approach works really, really well when you have low dollar cost value services, like whether that be, you know, you're selling, let's say spa services for like 100 or 200 bucks a session.

Or you're selling like shoes or clothing or like any type of trinkets, things along those lines where the cost is not very high. Let's say it's like a few hundred dollars, right? This is a great space for B2C. You should be going to town. You should be using social media to your advantage. You should be using passive marketing campaigns to your advantage.

You know, ad, TV ads, radio ads, you know things along those lines are really great for this. They're awesome. Like there's a reason that we have infomercials. They just work, right? Like we've all been up late watching those infomercials at night, right? Like if they didn't work, people wouldn't keep doing them.

So my point is, is that there's a reason that these exist. There's a reason that passive marketing, digital ads, things along those lines work, but what they tend to work best for. Is that B2C customer where you're selling a low cost service or product to an individual works absolutely amazing. And you should definitely double down.

Where else do you need the passive marketing? Remember whether you are B2B or B2C, you still need passive marketing. You need a great website. You need a website that looks absolutely amazing. That's visually appealing, right? Remember you're marketing to millennials now. That's just the world we live in.

You're marketing to millennials. We have incredibly short attention spans. I think I read somewhere you have about three seconds to win us over. Three seconds is not a lot of time, which means that your websites had better be beautiful. They'd better be engaging. They should definitely have some video or some type of moving elements on it.

You need something to wrap us in because you got about three seconds before we get bored or, or you got, you got three seconds. To convince us to stick around and see what's going on. So remember that whenever you are building websites, the things along those lines, your passive marketing strategies. Make sure that they are very visually appealing.

They're compelling. Don't be boring. Make sure that it's engaging and we're going to be interested in it. Because once again, every dollar you spend is a spent dollar, right? You need to be making sure that if you are creating content that if you are doing anything on the passive marketing side that you are doing it in a way that is gripping, that is compelling, that is visually appealing, that's going to make people stop and say, wow, that's cool.

I want to learn more, right? It's absolutely critical, especially, especially in 2024 and going forward because it's, Your demographics are frankly, just getting younger and younger and younger. And the younger, the demographic, the shorter, the attention span. That's just the truth. And so as we move forward, that's what you're going to see.

You're going to see lots of things changing in the way to try to engage this younger demographic, which is their attention span. They may be right now, they got three seconds, you know, in five years, they're going to have two. 10 years, they're going to have one. And so we need to make sure that whatever we are creating, whether it's a beautiful image for our social media campaigns, whether it's a great video, whether it's a beautiful website that is engaging and wrapping, and that it's going to keep people wanting more.

The whole goal with all of marketing, remember the whole goal with all of marketing is to build enough curiosity and interest for them to want to learn more, right? That's, that's how this leads into sales, right? You have to build curiosity, you have to build intrigue, you have to build interest. And so my best tip to all of you.

Whether you guys are doing active marketing campaigns or passive marketing campaigns is to make sure that whatever you do, that it's interesting, it's compelling, and it is going to keep people wanting more. So once again in reflection in business to business or active marketing campaigns, we recommend 80 percent active to 20 percent passive.

If you are B2C, you're selling products and services to individuals. You should reverse that to an 80 percent passive. And a 20 percent active. Remember, you only have a limited marketing budget. So it's critical that we identify the most effective strategy for your business ahead of time to give your marketing dollars the furthest reach possible.

All right. That takes us to the end of our episode. I want to just give you guys a heads up coming up on Sunday, March 10th on episode 114. We have the founder of Cardly, Patrick Gaskin. This is an absolutely awesome, awesome interview. Patrick is from Australia. It's such a cool, cool company. And I hope that you all enjoy the episode shout outs this week.

Jason Michaud, Shawn Neels, Scot Bryson, Sebastien Gendron, Patricia Bathory, Matt Brennan, Mather Fox, Laiba Javed, Jenna Centofante, Cynthia Kersey, Lisa Todd, Brad Warren, Jesse Kerr, C. R. Holmes, and Jory Lamb. Thank you so, so much. And if you've enjoyed this episode and you need business development support, whether that just be coaching services, whether that be training or whether that be direct business development support, reach out info@capitalbd.ca.

Until next time, this has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you. On the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.