Think small -- and big

Spike at Brains on Fire suggests you start thinking small. He lays out the pros and cons of mass-media advertising vs. small-scale communication with a select group of people.

When you focus your efforts on say, a small group of people that love you, or that belong to a very specific demographic or community and speak directly to them (or even better – invite them to have a conversation instead of doing all the talking), you now have something to work with that isn’t a complete shot in the dark. You’re able to start to form a relationship that isn’t based on the surfacy façade that people are so weary of. And now it’s not just about the product or service. It’s now about how that product or service fits into your customer’s lives. In other words, it’s not about you. It never was. So get over it.

Thinking small is a great place to start, especially if you don't have a lot of money in your marketing or communications budget. But some of you have a little money in your budgets for traditional marketing. If you do, think about ways to combine the pros of mass-media with the pros of online conversational marketing. If you're going to be advertising already, use those ads differently Instead of promoting your product or your cause, promote the service you're offering online as part of your conversational marketing effort. If you have a blog that offers parenting tips, run a series of radio ads that include a different parenting tip every week. If you have a legal podcast, include information from that podcast in your ads in the local newspaper.

Turn your advertising into a service, instead of a commercial. When you do that, you get the benefit of reaching more people -- and the added benefit of directing them to a place where they might come to trust you, instead of forgetting about you in 30 seconds.

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