We’ve reached a new phase of online marketing and it’s one that most people are going to ignore because it won’t make sense to them.
Or they won’t have patience for it.
Or they can’t measure it effectively.
It’s going to involve a strategy that your competition won’t see because they’ll be looking at the wrong spot.
What I’m talking about is the difference between lakes and rivers.
Marketing Past and Present: Building Lakes
You know how online marketing works today.
You create some type of content with the intent that it will take off. It’s like building a lake.
You find what you believe is a lovely spot for a lake so you dig a little hole and wait. You hope that the hole fills up with water and eventually becomes a lake.
If nothing happens then what do you do next? You move to another spot and dig another hole hoping that it becomes a lake.
Most of the time you’re left disappointed but every once in a while a hole fills with water and starts to grow. When it becomes a lake it attracts animals and that makes you happy.
But now you’re addicted so you continue to dig holes hoping that another lake forms that brings in a ton of animals.
You continue to look for the magic formula that will show you where to dig a hole that will turn into a lake. What shovel do you use? What soil do you look for?
It doesn’t matter what kind of animals it brings as long as it brings some.
The Limitations of the Lake
You love your lake. You love the animals.
But you want more animals. Unfortunately, you’ve attracted all of the animals in the area.
You venture out to new parts of the land. Land that you aren’t familiar with and try to use the same tactics as before.
They don’t work.
Maybe then you can force some animals to the old lakes. They won’t budge.
You have to hope that your ecosystem never runs out of animals or that there is a drought.
There is a lot riding on the success of this small group of lakes.
Marketing Future: Building Rivers
A river is different.
A river goes through many different terrains and ecosystems. A river touches many animals.
You can follow a river. A river can branch off into smaller streams, but those streams are still part of the river.
And more importantly, the river doesn’t end. In fact, when you think it ends it actually becomes the sea and the sea is unlimited.
The river can reach more animals because the animals can find the river where they are instead of having to go to a single spot.
While the river in one spot acts differently than the river in another spot, it’s still the same river going in the same direction to the same place.
And that’s how your marketing should be.
You want to create a content ecosystem in which people get immense value exactly where they’re at.
But…
But if they want to see where the river can take them they have the option.
But it’s not up to you. It’s up to them. They have to be enticed to see what else is out there.
They shouldn’t feel forced to move because the river dries out like the lake. The river itself builds an ecosystem that once established, is impossible to stop.
Here’s How You Build Your River
I know the metaphor got a bit crazy so let’s break it down into terms you understand.
Let’s say you only post content on Instagram. That’s your land and on Instagram you post some content that does well.
You’ve created a Lake and you do the wise thing and continue to post content similar to that Lake. Every once in a while you post something different and it doesn’t do as well and you don’t like that feeling.
So you go back to your Lake.
But because you were turned off by the performance of that other content you also miss out on bringing new people (animals) into your ecosystem. Instead of focusing on how each piece of content connects like a river, you continue to look for those individual pieces of content that can create lakes.
It gets even worse when the only thing you do is post content on Instagram.
How deep can you go with your content on Instagram? Where can you truly take people?
Sure, you have a lake but it’s a shallow lake. It can’t go deep at all.
The river is different. The river connects the different ecosystems.
That’s how you should view your business.
How My River Looks
I have no idea how you arrived at this post, but here you are. This post is not isolated. It’s not a lake.
If you like the concepts presented in it then maybe you’ll go to check out the FREE Pocket Course. That will continue to lead you down the river.
Maybe you’ll catch a link to something else that I offer like the free course on building a Feel Good Funnel or a link to a blog post.
Or you could decide that you want my help in building the river for you.
The lake has people wondering if there is anything else. The river shows them exactly where to go.
This is what makes a Feel Good Funnel so extremely effective. and why they do a great job of selling without selling.
But more importantly, I understand that each piece of content that I put out there is part of the river’s ecosystem. While I would love for each piece to be a major success I understand the they don’t have to be for the river to flow.
They just have to be out there for people to find.
To better understand how this river thinking fits into building an online business check out the FREE Pocket Course.