Passive Marketing: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

The primary goal of a marketing plan is to help an organization make sales, and it is no different with an internet marketing campaign. The campaign fulfills its mission by driving targeted traffic to the company website(s).

All of the different work that a company does to drive traffic to the company website(s) falls into one of two categories, active or passive marketing. The Internet Squeeze uses these terms differently than have most traditional marketing trainers. Rather than defining the action that our marketing is designed to compel, these labels serve to specify the focus and longevity of the campaign. Active campaigns drive large volumes of traffic, but have a limited “shelf life,” while passive marketing provides a steady stream of traffic for a potentially unlimited time.

Active Marketing

Active marketing campaigns are designed to drive traffic to a site immediately. Often times, active campaigns are paid placements that only drive traffic so long as the ad is running and once completed, traffic begins to dwindle immediately.

Active campaigns serve a valuable purpose, as they offer the most versatile approach of gaining immediate market attention. Active campaigns are simple to launch and can impact the traffic to a website in tremendous and rapid fashion.

Active marketing is very similar to traditional media advertising, where a paid message is launched with the expectation of increased activity coming in to the company. For this reason, today’s savvy internet marketing plan needs to step back and ensure that the active marketing portion of the plan serves the greater goals of the plan. Too often, companies have a habit of “throwing money” at advertising without having a clearly defined, attainable goal outlined for each specific advertisement.

Passive Marketing

Passive campaigns lack the excitement of the “super bowl ad” because there is no immediate explosion of traffic, rather it is a “build it and they will come” approach to herding consumers to your website. This is a “get rich slow” scheme if there ever was one, but if executed properly, passive campaigns become the gift that keep on giving.

Imagine running a television ad one single time that produced sales for five continuous years. Customers stream in to your company saying they remembered the ad spot you ran years ago and they still felt compelled to work with you and your organization. Too good to be true, right?

This is exactly what passive campaigns are designed to do. These are advertisements that pull people to them because of the value that the ad itself contains. Perhaps it is a product review or a video demonstration, or even a commentary on how something should be done. Think “evergreen” when you are visualizing a passive marketing campaign, because we want to create content that has value for an extended period of time.

Active and Passive Marketing Examples

As can be seen from the table above, active campaigns like pay per click management have very little shelf life and do not retain much benefit to the company once completed, whereas the passive marketing campaigns can grow in strength over time. It is this difference in time value that makes passive marketing attractive to the growing company, whereas active marketing is far more attractive to a company that has its primary focus in the present.

Tagged as: active marketing, advertising, internet, internet marketing, internet squeeze, marketing campaign, marketing campaigns, marketing plan, media advertising, passive marketing, steady stream, steady streem of traffic, the internet squeeze, traditional marketing