Most successful scrappy marketing campaigns start small, gain momentum and then offer all sorts of opportunities that you never would have thought of when you started. Things turn out different than planned, which is ok. And which is why it's important that you don't overplan your marketing but rather give yourself the freedom to change goals as you go, leverage early successes and build on the momentum gained.
In today's marketing environment, just about everything changes all the time. If you don't adjust your marketing initiatives as you go, you'll be caught flat-footed. But if you build on the momentum gained, you'll have the opportunity to scale and enjoy tremendous successes.
How momentum builds:
1. Define 2-3 clear objectives, and 5-6 goals that you think will help you achieve them.
2. Execute a number of scrappy marketing tactics against those objectives.
3. Evaluate the success of your marketing tactics, discontinue what didn't work and build upon the momentum of what is working. Your objectives won't change but the goals to get you there should.
Examples of how momentum builds:
1. You pitch a number of bloggers to try your product. One of the bloggers requests an interview which turns out to be a great success. Send a video of your interview to the other bloggers and offer that you'd be happy to do an interview for their audience as well.
2. You're marketing and selling a popular ebook that you initially envisioned to just help you sell product. Keep the momentum going and get writing on a second ebook. Once completed email everybody who bought the first ebook and offer them your new ebook for 30% off.
3. You're doing a paid search campaign. Unexpectedly, the content search (ads running on other people's sites) is outperforming regular search (regular Google searches). Contact other contextual search companies, explain your successes and expectations and scale it.
4. You have an interesting blog. It gets written up on lots of other blogs. One day a producer of a popular cable TV show, who read about your blog about other blogs, calls and invites you on the show.
The big lesson is that you don't have to worry about having every aspect of your marketing planned and thought out. Work hard to gain momentum, and then scale as best as you see fit.
Enjoy the momentum.
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