Michelle explains the difference between relationship marketing (deep, authentic connections) and traffic marketing (mass outreach) and stresses the importance of aligning marketing strategies with your business model.
Do you struggle to decide your marketing strategy? Do you know if you want to reach as many people as possible or just your target audience? Michelle Warner, a business designer and strategist, discusses a shift in her marketing strategy. Previously focused on one-on-one work and relationship marketing, she’s now transitioning to teaching more bootcamps, which requires a higher volume of leads. This shift means she needs to balance her marketing strategies, incorporating more traffic marketing alongside relationship marketing to align with her new product mix.
Michelle explains the difference between relationship marketing (deep, authentic connections) and traffic marketing (mass outreach) and stresses the importance of aligning marketing strategies with your business model. She also highlights her involvement in Michelle Mazur’s summit, "Make Marketing Suck Less," which aims to help businesses find suitable marketing strategies.
For more details and to join the summit visit: https://drmichellemazur.com/event
Check out the full episode at TheMichelleWarner.com
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner, a business designer and strategist. In the 15 years I've been doing this work, I have noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into a trap of centering strategies first, when they need to be centering sequence. Because the reality is, the steps you take in your business and the order in which you take them is more important than how well you implement any single strategy. So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than blindly following someone else's strategy. Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy.
This Week's Focus: A Behind-the-Scenes Look
In every episode of this podcast, I answer a real question from a real entrepreneur struggling with a real challenge in their business. But guess what? We're going to deviate a bit from that regular format this week to take you behind the scenes of my business as I shift in how I'm marketing. So you could say we're going to answer a question that I have in my business.
In episode 4, Why This Podcast and Why Now? I answered a question from a listener who wanted to understand, given everything I teach about being intentional with your marketing choices and doing them in the right order, choosing that sequence over strategy, and given the difference between relationship and traffic marketing, why I was launching this podcast. It was a fun episode to record and one of my most popular yet. So as this summer progresses and I've had a little bit of time to do some deeper business planning, I've been behind the scenes plotting another tweak to my marketing. And I thought that because of that, I'd take you behind the scenes again to answer a question that hasn't been asked yet, but I know will as soon as you see what I'm going to be up to. And that question is, Michelle, why do I see you engaging in traffic marketing tactics when you spend so much time teaching and advocating for relationship marketing? It's a good question, right? Because surprise my friends, you are about to see a bigger dose of traffic marketing from me than you've seen in the past. And that starts today.
Understanding the Marketing Continuum
So let's talk about it because as usual, there are lessons for all of you in my own reasoning and my own decision making. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to share an event that the delightful and wickedly smart Michelle Mazur is hosting that I'm excited to participate in to kick off this shift. And it's one that can help you think through different marketing strategies that might be right for you if you, like me, especially after listening to this episode, are looking to realign yourself with your spot on the marketing continuum. So stay tuned for that at the end of the episode. But before I get into all of that and what I'm planning for my business, let's make sure we're all on the same page about how I think about marketing and how I specifically think about the very first question you should be asking yourself when you are thinking about your marketing. What's that first question that comes up in sequence over strategy? And that's the difference between what I call relationship and traffic marketing.
First, I want you to picture a continuum. So just a simple straight line and somewhere on that line is represented every marketing strategy that there is. On one end of that continuum, I tend to think of it as the left side of that line, is what I call relationship marketing. And at the other end of the continuum, what I tend to picture and show, if you see me in visuals, is what I call the traffic marketing side of marketing. What do those mean? Relationship marketing is simply a marketing system that prioritizes the building of relationships as the primary driver of your marketing and sales by deploying strategies that are deep, active, and focused on authentic connection. Think here, referrals, having conversations, speaking, training, building interaction and collaboration and talking to people. We're not talking about downloads, launches, ads, anything that puts a barrier between you and the potential client. Now, of course, there are exceptions, but in general, our relationship marketing is something that is going to result in you being in a conversation, a real conversation with your leads. Traffic marketing, on the other hand, is what people think of when they think marketing, usually. It's the mass marketing. It deploys strategies that are designed to attract large numbers of prospective leads, and it's going to be a little bit more transactional and less relationship-focused. We're talking things here like social media, mass advertising, mass email marketing.
The Importance of Alignment in Marketing
Now, here's where it gets interesting, because obviously you can build a relationship with people using traffic marketing, and all relationship marketing doesn't mean that you can't reach a number of people. And that's what's interesting about this, because again, let's picture that continuum. Let's picture that line. Every marketing strategy can be plotted on a point somewhere on the continuum between those two sides. So if the far left side of our continuum is the most extreme version of relationship marketing, and the far right side is the most extreme version of traffic marketing, every marketing strategy available to you lies somewhere on that continuum. It might be right in the middle. It might be a combination of relationship and traffic that lands right in the middle of that continuum. And that also means that by definition, your marketing strategy, meaning whatever you are doing right now to promote your products and services, can be plotted somewhere on that continuum. If you and I were to get together, we could look at all the different marketing strategies you were using, and we could plot you and say, hey, you're on the traffic side, but not all the way on the traffic side, or, oh, look, your strategies are on the relationship side, or you're right in the middle. And because of that, whether you realize it or not, you have made a choice to lean more heavily on relationship marketing or on traffic marketing. Let me say that again. The marketing strategies that you have chosen to use have inherently meant that you have chosen a spot on this continuum. You're either doing a lot of relationship marketing or a lot of traffic marketing or a combination thereof.
Why does this matter when we get back to sequence over strategy? Listen up here, because this is a big deal. And this is kind of the ballgame, right? It matters because every product or service has a natural alignment with a spot on that continuum. There's a natural relationship between a product that's being sold and its ideal marketing mix. For example, the more high-level, high-touch, or custom a product is, the more expensive, frankly, probably going to land with relationship marketing. The more mass market, high quantity, it's going to be more traffic marketing. And if something's kind of in between those two things, well, it's going to be a combination of relationship and traffic marketing. It's probably going to be something that fits somewhere in the middle of that continuum. And so when you traffic market, when you sell a service that lines up with relationship marketing, you're going to have a lot of what we call noise in your marketing efforts, a lot of inefficiency, a.k.a. a lot of frustration and lack of results for your hard work. And the inverse is true. If you sell a product that's aligned with traffic marketing, if you're trying to sell a book and you're using relationship marketing to do so, meaning maybe you're trying to get on the phone with every single person who might buy your book, it's going to be a lot of inefficiency in that and people are going to get uncomfortable. And so when we think about marketing, when we think about this first question, the sequence over strategy question, before you choose any kind of marketing strategies, you want to first understand where your products line up on this marketing continuum so that you can choose strategies that are in alignment with wherever you have landed on the continuum.
My Marketing Shift and its Implications
And that brings us to me. And some decisions I made this summer for my business. To catch you up, for the last 10 years, I've primarily been a one-on-one business working individually with entrepreneurs and small businesses to design business models that would perform the way they needed them to. Yes, I've also had my networking that pays course for about six of those years and I absolutely love that course. And that's obviously very different than doing custom one-on-one services. But that course, frankly, it kind of came along as a bit of a mistake that it was ever created. Well, not a mistake, but maybe not something that was perfectly and intentionally planned. That's a story for another day for why networking that pays exists in the way it does. I'm so grateful that it does. It helps so many people, but it wasn't exactly in a perfect business model for me. So here's where things get interesting. About two years ago, I decided to test out a new format and I taught my first bootcamp. I did this because since networking that pays existed and since I'd started talking about more of the work I do in one-on-ones and I'd started talking to larger audiences, AKA maybe done a little bit of marketing that looked like traffic marketing, and I started to tell them about relationship marketing and how to design your business, people started to notice. And people who are primed to benefit from that work, but who probably weren't ready or just didn't need the intensity of my one-on-one work, started to be in my community. So I wanted to help them.
I developed a bootcamp format where I could share this knowledge and get a lot more people moving in the right direction. I taught one as an experiment, and I'm not going to lie, to my surprise, I loved the format. Like, love, love, loved it. I could not believe how much I enjoyed teaching this thing. But I was still doing so many one-on-ones that it was hard to find time in my schedule to teach these bootcamps, because we go very intense for a week and it kind of blows up my one-on-one schedules. So maybe I taught three or four a year.
And well, I've decided I want that to change. I love the bootcamp so much that I've made a commitment to myself that I want to teach a lot more of them. Like, not three or four each year, but 10 or 12, maybe even more.
Addressing the need for more leads
And what does that mean? Well, my friends, that means my product mix is shifting. And what did I just say at the beginning of this? That means I have a sequence over strategy question to answer. If my product mix is shifting, it probably means my spot on the marketing continuum also needs to shift. Because what comes with this decision? What comes with the decision to, instead of teach three or four bootcamps each year, teach 10 or 12? Well, what comes with that is the need for more leads, right?
So let's go back to the alignment question. In my one-on-one practice, I need maybe 20 good leads a year for my one-on-one. Or in marketing continuum terms, I was very aligned with extreme relationship marketing. But if I'm going to teach 10 to 12 bootcamps, I need 10 times or more that many leads.
So again, what does that mean? It means before I even think about how I'm going to gather those leads, before I even think about the strategies I use, I need to think in my mind, how is that changing my place on the continuum? If I was in extreme relationship marketing, then that's no longer an alignment. So I need to shift somewhere more in the middle. Teaching 10 to 12 bootcamps is not going to require a full traffic number of leads. I still don't need thousands of leads a year. But I need to add some traffic to the mix and find some new strategies that get me a little closer to the middle of the continuum so that I can find the people who can fill those bootcamps.
And listen, I'm just going to name this. This is where it gets a little awkward for me. And frankly, I've already taken some heat from some folks when I've done this in the past. Because yes, I am going to be using traffic tactics to market my relationship marketing bootcamps. That might sound a little funny or backwards, but it's not. It's actually a perfectly sequenced decision.
Balancing Relationship and Traffic Marketing
Relationship marketing is right for so many businesses, including my one-to-one business. And no one is talking about it, so I want to talk louder about it and help more people. Which means I need to turn on some traffic spigots so I can reach those people with the message about relationship marketing. This does not mean that I don't believe in or value relationship marketing. The opposite is true. As I say all the time, there is nothing wrong with either relationship or traffic marketing or whatever mix you might use in and of itself. No strategy is bad.
The only thing quote-unquote wrong is if you are using a combination of tactics that are not in alignment with your product mix. What's wrong is if you are using traffic strategies when your product mix is aligned with relationship. Or if you are using relationship strategies when your product mix is not aligned with that.
So when my primary goal was to sell the one-on-one service, it made sense that I used relationship marketing almost exclusively. But now that that has changed, and now that I have so many people asking me to teach and to be louder about relationship marketing, my goal has expanded because I need to reach more people. And so it would be wrong if I only used relationship marketing because it's no longer in alignment with my product mix.
And this matters because you need to remember that the topic of what I'm talking about doesn't matter because it's irrelevant here. The alignment is what matters. And I'm making a big deal about this because there's a lesson here for many of you.
Because I hear from copywriters, launch planners, maybe graphic designers, service professionals, people who provide traffic-based services but who do so one-on-one, right? So my copywriters who are writing sales emails for their clients or my launch planners who are planning big, elaborate, traffic-based launches for your clients. I hear from you and you have felt like you need to market yourselves the same way your clients do so that you can show off your skills and you can show off that you know what you're doing. Because if you're a launch planner, surely you need to launch to sell your services, right? No, no you do not.
Aligning Marketing Strategies with Service Type
Launch planning is usually a very niche, one-on-one, custom package. It is a service that is in alignment with relationship marketing. Even though the activity you're going to do, the service you're going to provide, is traffic marketing resources.
So you should be relationship marketing even though you provide a traffic-based service. Same for you copywriters. You can demonstrate your skills in other ways, but what you need to be clear about is the service you're providing or the thing you're teaching about, in my case, does not necessarily dictate where you are, where you land with your marketing strategies.
How that service is packaged is what dictates that or how that information is packaged. So the same way you're going to see more traffic marketing from me, even though I'm teaching relationship marketing, I want to encourage all of you to do more relationship marketing if you have a service that provides traffic-based material because it's not about the topic.
So listen, if any of you call me out for this, I'm going to remind you of this. If I am traffic marketing to get a relationship message out, it means that I believe more people need to hear that message. And so I'm going to do my job to get that message out. And so it all has to do with what you're offering, not the topic of that offer.
And that's how you start to figure out how you should be making marketing decisions. And by the way, this is how you choose your marketing strategies, right? It's all in that sequence over strategy. You ask yourself, number one, what is your product mix? Then number two, based off of your product mix, where do you land on this marketing continuum? And then and only then, when you understand where you are on this marketing continuum, somewhere between relationship and traffic, do you insert the strategies that make sense for your place on that continuum? Because every marketing strategy is in alignment with something, some area of that continuum.
Conclusion and Future Plans
So let's sum this up. Starting with this episode, you are going to see more traffic marketing from me. Not complete traffic marketing, but more of a mix. Because I am changing my product mix. And with that, I am making the decision to get into alignment, to realign myself from being a very, very heavy relationship business, almost all the way over on that relationship side, to something that's more in the middle. So you're not gonna see extreme traffic strategies from me. Don't panic. It's still gonna be a lot of relationship woven in, but you are going to see a little bit more traffic coming in. And the reason for that is I am shifting my business model to reach more people.
I wanted to share how my product mix is shifting and what that means for my marketing approach. Over the years, I’ve been heavily focused on one-on-one work and relationship marketing. However, after experimenting with a bootcamp format and realizing how much I enjoy it, I’ve decided to shift my focus.
Instead of teaching three or four bootcamps a year, I’m aiming to teach 10 to 12, or even more. This change means I need to reassess my marketing strategies because teaching more bootcamps will require a lot more leads than my one-on-one practice did.
Previously, my marketing was heavily aligned with extreme relationship marketing, which worked well for my one-on-one services. But with this new focus, I need to add more traffic strategies to the mix to find new leads for my bootcamps. This doesn’t mean I’ll be abandoning relationship marketing—it will still play a significant role—but I need to balance it with traffic tactics to meet the increased demand.
It might seem unusual to use traffic strategies for a relationship marketing bootcamp, but it’s all about alignment. If you’re teaching relationship marketing but need to reach a broader audience, traffic tactics can be essential to get your message out.
The key takeaway is that the marketing strategies you use should align with your product mix. It’s not about whether a strategy is inherently good or bad but whether it fits your current business model.
This approach is something I work on with clients regularly. It’s a good reminder that your marketing should match what you’re selling. If you’re shifting your product mix, you should also adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.
I’m also excited to be part of Michelle Mazur’s summit, "Make Marketing Suck Less." Michelle and I share a similar view on marketing—we both focus on the importance of aligning marketing strategies with the business model. Her summit will cover various marketing strategies while encouraging you to choose the ones that fit your specific situation.
You can join us at the summit by visiting https://bit.ly/marketing-suck-less. It’s a great opportunity to reflect on your own marketing strategies and find the best fit for your needs.
Thank you for being here. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and rate the show. It helps others find it. I look forward to seeing you back here in two weeks and hopefully at Michelle’s summit.
Until then!