Transform Passive Marketing into Active Leads!

Ask yourself a hard question: if you shut off every dollar you spend on visibility tomorrow, how many prospects would stop calling?

If the honest answer is "not many," you may be at risk for having too many passive marketing campaigns. Passive marketing has a place in your marketing strategy. But a lot of agencies miss opportunities by putting too much confidence in it and too little effort into active marketing.

Passive marketing catches demand. It doesn't create it.

Passive strategies work whether or not you get out of your office:

• Your agency website
• A visible location with good signage, billboards, or bus bench ads
• Sponsoring a local sports team or buying a spot on the team calendar
• Business brochures in welcome baskets and gift bags

This kind of marketing can help. It makes you findable, and it makes you look legitimate when someone finally goes looking. But passive marketing doesn't create demand. It catches demand that already exists. And unless it carries a real hook, it's branding, not lead generation.

So here's the question you should ask about every passive marketing dollar you spend: can this be made active? If it can, activate it. That's where the leads are, and it’s covered in more depth below.

If it truly can't be made active, then give it a hook. A hook is a reason to act plus a way for you to know it worked. A billboard with your name and logo is branding. A billboard with a QR code for "a checklist to prepare for wildfires" is lead generation.

If a passive marketing campaign can't be made active, at the very least it should give someone a reason to contact you and give you a way to count the contacts.

Active marketing is where production comes from

The shift from passive to active marketing isn't always a bigger budget. Sometimes it takes time, not more money. Most of the time it takes personal commitment from you and your team.

Every passive strategy you already run deserves a second look to see if it can be made active:

• You sponsored the team. Who shows up at the games and talks to the coaches and the parents?
• You put brochures in the welcome baskets. Who follows up and actually connects with the person who received one?
• You run social accounts. What value do you bring to the people who follow you? Do you comment on their posts, share community events, drop useful tips, and give people a reason to know you before they ever need you?

Too many agencies leave that opportunity on the table. And don't forget, active marketing doesn't only come from converting passive marketing campaigns. Consider active marketing campaigns such as:

• Hand out free water at a local park on a hot day.
• Strategically visit your local farmers market and talk to local vendors who run commercial businesses that may be underinsured.

Make it a role, not a mood

Here's where good intentions go to die: "we should get out to more events." Should isn't a system. A system has a name attached to it and a spot on the calendar.

Working on your agency instead of in it means active marketing can't live in your head as something you'll get to when things slow down. Things won't slow down. So build it in:

• Name the owner. Who's responsible for game-day conversations, basket follow-ups, and social engagement? Not "the team." A person.
• Put it on the calendar. Two community touches a week beats twenty crammed in before you burn out.
• Give them a hook to carry. Same rule as your passive marketing campaigns. Every conversation should end with a reason to connect again, whether that's a coverage review, a quote, or an honest follow-up.

When people in your agency's branded apparel show up at the same event, you stop looking like a sponsor and start looking like a fixture. That isn't luck. That's a role and a calendar doing their job.

Your move this week 

• Pull every passive marketing line your agency pays for onto one page. Next to each one, answer two questions:

1. Can this be made active, and who owns it?
2. If it can't, what hook can I add so it stops being branding and starts generating leads?

• List any active marketing strategies your agency should be running but isn't.