We all have been witnessing over the last few years that business organizations (small or big) are becoming highly aggressive in sales, marketing & promotion activities. All media, including FB & WhatsApp, is being used ‘to the hilt' so much so that receivers (& not all of them are your prospects too!) are getting annoyed and tired of you pushing them ‘hard’ for sales and with information which may not mean much to them (e.g. your achievements, laurels etc etc)! Despite all this undesired ‘pushing’, the effort doesn’t bear fruit as the receivers (including your target customers) are getting increasingly immune to all this extensive (& intrusive) ‘noise’ (because you are not the only on doing so). It may even result into a negative image being created.
In such a scenario, ‘Indirect Marketing’ would help you pierce this noise/clutter. For the sake of clarity, indirect marketing is any form of marketing that doesn’t try to sell something directly to consumers, but rather allows businesses to build relationships with them. Easy examples of this can include social media, blogging, or newsletters. However, stronger examples would be (1) some construction house running a free ambulance service, (2) some business organization carrying out an event (say a polyclinic conducting a free eye check-up camp) which adds value or contributes in some ways to society at large (or the target market specifically too). At The Senate Business Center, we carry out a lot of Entrepreneurship Development activities free-of-charge like Talk Shows, Study Tours, Knowledge Sessions (known as 'Essentials for Entrepreneurs series), educational movies, Networking Sessions etc.
A good indirect marketing effort will get you noticed and induce people to know more about you w/o you having to ‘push’ your way through. The fact that you are adding value to them will help create some relationship or at least some goodwill for you.
Well known social media evangelist Mahesh Murthy says "Your marketing IQ is inversely proportional to your marketing budget!" I am sure smart entrepreneurs like us can think and discover many ways to ‘indirectly market’ our organization/product/service :-)!
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