In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle Warner dives deep into the world of relationship and traffic marketing and helps you understand the importance of choosing the right marketing approach.
Are you tired of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks in your business? In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle Warner dives deep into the world of relationship and traffic marketing and helps you understand the importance of choosing the right marketing approach. You'll learn how to meet your leads in a powerful way, whether you're a coach looking for clients or an entrepreneur seeking sustainable growth. Toss the spaghetti back in the pot and embrace the sequence over strategy mantra for building a sturdy business. Let's make marketing fun and effective again!
Check out the full episode at TheMichelleWarner.com
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner, and I'm a business designer and strategist. For over 15 years now, and working with more than 1,000 clients, I've helped small businesses grow. And during all that time, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. When business owners are confused, or they're not growing the way they want, they're actually all facing the same problem and trying to solve it in the same incorrect way, and they don't even realize what they're doing.
So what are they doing? They're throwing out a bunch of popular tactics at their problems. Maybe they're posting on social media a ton, trying to grow followers, releasing new products, or hiring a bunch of new team members. Maybe they're raising prices, or lowering prices, or researching how to price things correctly. Maybe they're launching a podcast, a YouTube channel, or a podcast that's also a YouTube channel. I literally had one client tell me that a former coach said if she didn't post 15 times a day to LinkedIn, she would never get any clients.
Now listen, none of these things are inherently bad or wrong, except maybe the 15 posts per day thing. But all these things ignore one foundational problem. A problem that if we just stopped to solve it, would help us build in a stable, steady way without all the noise or waste or frustration that we come all too familiar with as entrepreneurs. Think about it. Imagine building efficiently with less drama and more confidence. But as entrepreneurs, we've set ourselves up to fail at that most basic goal, no matter how good it sounds. And that's because we spend so much time throwing so many things at the wall, just waiting for something to stick, that it's hard to know why something sticks when it does, which makes it hard to repeat the wins. It also makes it hard to understand any losses.
So, unfortunately, in all that chaos of the day-to-day, it's way too easy to get lost trying to do all of the things. And when you do that, you're never going to build something sustainable and growing. You're never going to build a sturdy business. And look, I get it. It's very tempting to look for the trends, the popular tactics, or the perfect playbook that can make it feel like you're in control and you have an instant winner. It's also very easy to throw that spaghetti at the wall. We've all done it. We've all been there. But the real skill we need to master is different.
The real skill we need to master is taking a breath before making the throw to make sure we're asking the right questions first. If we did that, we'd realize an important thing. We'd realize that it's more important to figure out the right order for our actions than it is to take any action at all. Yes, you heard me right. Rather than throw that spaghetti at the wall, rather than just taking a bunch of action, or rather than looking for a perfectly polished playbook, what we need the most is to understand sequence over strategy. That's the idea that it's more important to do things in the correct order than to do things correctly.
I'm going to say that again. It's more important to do things in the correct order than it is to do things correctly. The perfect strategy for your pricing won't matter. if you don't sell something people want. The perfect strategy for this podcast doesn't matter if I hadn't proven my ideas elsewhere or built a small audience of passionate supporters already. What you do next is the most important decision you can make right now.
Welcome to sequence over strategy, a show about small business entrepreneurship. My goal on the show is to help you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than someone else's theoretical strategy. And I'm going to do it all so you can build a sustainable business that serves you for all the things that matter the most, your time, your energy, and your profit. In every episode, I'm going to answer a real question from a real entrepreneur struggling with a real challenge in their business.
This Week’s Burning Question
Here's today's question from Leanne Young, who runs a coaching business. Leanne says,
“I've been posting on social media almost every day and I'm about to do a free masterclass. This is the business coaching advice that I've been given. I've not gotten one client, not even a free call booked. Do you have some other recommendations so I can get some clients and generate some much needed revenue?”
Leanne, thank you for this question. When I talk about marketing, and specifically the difference between what I call relationship and traffic marketing, this is one of the most common responses that I hear. Actually, probably the most common response. And I hear it most often in situations like this one, where folks have been using mostly traffic marketing, and they realize that based on the products and services they offer, they need to shift that to an emphasis on something I call relationship marketing.
And before I go any further, if you're not sure what I'm talking about when I refer to traffic or relationship marketing, hang with me. I'm going to break that down in just a minute. But let's first talk about why this is such a common question.
Because traffic marketing (and when I'm talking about traffic marketing, I'm talking about social media), email marketing, opt-in, traffic marketing, it makes up all the easy tools we've learned along the way. And for years, it worked, right? You were taught to do social media, email marketing, because it worked. And the type of advice that Leanne received was fine, no matter what type of business you ran.
But in the last several years, as markets have caught up, as algorithms have taken over, as content has increased, and frankly, as noise has increased in the market, you need to be more precise with your marketing, and you need to understand the difference between what I call relationship and traffic marketing. So it's very natural to be in this position, thinking that you're doing all of the correct things, but not seeing any meaningful results from those actions. And that is maddening, to say the least, which is why I need you to pay attention to this episode because I know Leanne is not even close to the only person who's experiencing this issue where you're doing things quote unquote according to the book, but it's not working. And like I said, it all comes down to this difference between relationship and traffic marketing and asking yourself which style you should be using before you start launching into any tactics.
The Traffic/Relationship Continuum
So now that I've laid out the question we're going to explore, namely why you're not getting the results you want from the marketing advice you're receiving, even though that marketing advice seems pretty standard and we know what the answer isn't, which is not to keep doing what you're doing because you're not getting the results that you need out of it. We need to talk about the full spectrum of marketing strategies and how they live on a continuum.
So I want you to picture in your head just a straight line that is a continuum. And at the end of that continuum, let's say the left half of it, is going to be what I call relationship marketing. And the other half of that continuum is going to be made up of what I call traffic marketing. Let's start with our definitions. Relationship marketing is a marketing system that prioritizes the building of relationships as the primary driver of marketing and sales by deploying strategies that are deep, active, and focused on authentic connection. Think referrals, conversations, speaking, training, anytime you're interacting or collaborating.
If we're thinking about that continuum, the most extreme version of relationship marketing is your referral, right? That's all the way over on the left-hand side of the continuum. Your referral where somebody who knows, loves, and trusts you, tells a client, tells a colleague, and recommends you. That's the most extreme version of relationship marketing. but we have a whole half of the marketing continuum we can play with that are still relationship marketing strategies that do not rely on you sitting back and waiting for a referral to come in.
What relationship marketing is not is offering downloads or what we might traditionally call opt-ins. traditional launches, advertising. Anything that puts a barrier between you and the potential client is not relationship marketing. And when I say a barrier, I mean something that is asking the potential client to take an action instead of you as the potential service provider taking an action. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but as a general rule, anything on the relationship marketing side is very proactive by you, making sure you are getting in front of people and building relationships with them.
Traffic marketing, on the other hand, is what people think of when they think marketing. It's the mass marketing stuff. This is all of the marketing strategies that you have probably been taught. It deploys strategies that are designed to attract large numbers of prospective leads, and it's going to be more transactional than relationship marketing and much less relationship focused. Here we're talking things like social media, mass advertising, mass email marketing.
Now here's what's interesting. I described that continuum to you, and every marketing strategy that you can choose can be plotted on a point somewhere on that continuum between those two extremes. So again, if we have referrals coming in as the most extreme form of relationship marketing, and we have mass emails, those retailers who love to email you five, six times a day as the most extreme form of traffic marketing, there are a lot of strategies. Every single marketing strategy lies somewhere in between those, somewhere on this continuum between relationship and traffic marketing. 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 we were to look at what you are doing for marketing, we would be able to plot that on a line and say, “Are you relationship marketing? Are you traffic marketing? Are you doing some combination of those two?”
So whether you know it or not, you have made a choice to lean more heavily on relationship marketing or on traffic marketing. Why does this matter? I want you to really listen up here because this is a big deal. This is the whole ball game. The fact that you have made this choice and very likely don't realize that you have made this choice matters because every product or service also has a natural alignment with a spot on that continuum. There is a natural relationship between a product and service that you are selling and its ideal marketing mix. In general, the more high-level, high-touch, custom service or product you have is better matched with relationship marketing. Whereas the more mass-market, high-quantity product or service is better matched with traffic marketing.
But here's the catch, and I alluded to this earlier. Most people don't stop and make that choice consciously. They skip the step, they skip the sequence of deliberately choosing whether they should be relationship or traffic marketing. Now, if you're doing this, this is not your fault. Business owners skip this because they don't realize that it's a choice that they should make, and 95% of the advice out there follows traffic marketing principles. Why is this the case? It's the case for a couple of reasons.
First off, it's the case because frankly, five years ago, it didn't matter that much. When the marketing landscape was not as loud as it currently is, you could get away with things. You could sell a product or service that was more naturally aligned with relationship tactics. You could still really successfully sell that through traffic methods and vice versa.
In the last five years, this has become very not true. We have seen a lot more noise added to the market. So anybody who is trying to sell via a means that is not aligned with their products or services are seeing a lot more inefficiency and they're being punished for not having made that choice a lot more than they were before. So the number one reason that this matters is that in the last five years the necessity of being correctly aligned has become much more important.
The second reason this is so important is that most people are only exposed to traffic marketing ideas and strategies. And that's because traffic marketing is very easy to teach. Traffic marketing, and again, here I'm talking about social media, email, content production. It's very easy to teach you how to churn out a bunch of content. Relationship marketing is not as easy to teach. It's much more about nuance and it's much more about building relationships. And that's a lot tougher to write up in a Google document. And so we see a lot more content out there that is teaching you how to traffic market. And therefore nobody even knows that relationship marketing exists. And so when you're out there and when you traffic market, but you're selling 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, aka a lot of frustration and lack of results for your hard work. This is not your fault, as we've just talked about.
Advice for Leanne
Leanne, you were listening to what seems like good marketing advice, and it is good marketing advice for some businesses, but it's probably no longer great advice for the services you're providing. The type of marketing strategy, Leanne, that you described is very much a traffic marketing strategy. And yet, if you are running a coaching business, that is likely aligned with relationship marketing. And so that's why you're not seeing results. Five years ago, probably would have been a very different story. But right now, again, it is becoming so much more important to align your products and services with the right type of marketing. And when you're not, frankly, you're being punished by the market much more.
The ramifications of not choosing the correct marketing are much higher than they have been. So what we're here today to do is to understand how to align your marketing efforts with your product mix so that you can stop hurting yourself and you can start getting some of those much needed sales. Now that we know about the difference between relationship and traffic marketing, let's return to Leanne's original question and get her some answers.
The first thing Leanne says is that she’s been posting on social media almost every day. Okay, so what does this tell me? We're going to break out her question and take it piece by piece. So when she says I've been posting on social media almost every day, what this tells me is that she's doing traffic marketing. Right. And what's the tell here? Well, the tell here is pretty obvious because social media is a numbers game. And so when you're trying to meet people on your own platform and you're trying to build a following, and you're trying to gain numbers and gain a following, gain visibility through an algorithm, through social media, kind of showing your posts to other people, that is a traffic tactic, right? You are using your platform and hoping that people find it. That is very much a traffic tactic. And it is something that we would expect to see if you need lower quality, less engaged and loyal leads, because traffic is very much about a numbers game. You're going to have more leads. And so by definition, there are going to be less quality, less loyalty. And that's what happens if you are posting on social media all day.
And then she says, I'm about to do a free masterclass. Well, what does that tell me? Well, there's actually nothing wrong with this one on the surface. This type of strategy can work as a second step in both a relationship and a traffic funnel. What do I mean by a second step? I mean that we've already done something in the first step by posting on social media, to meet people, right? We've done something to meet people. So this is the second thing we're asking them to do. She's going to offer a free masterclass, and that is a really appropriate second step. However, in a relationship funnel, and this is where it breaks down, that step needs the right leads coming through. Since in that first step, you were posting on social media and hoping people would find you and follow you in that way, you're not going to have quality leads who are coming to your free masterclass. You're going to have that very traffic based leads that are just by definition, lower quality leads. And now you're inviting them to a free masterclass and they don't have enough incentive. They don't have enough loyalty to you yet to attend that in a way that sets them up to be ready to buy from you. Because in a relationship funnel, if you're using this idea of a free masterclass as the second step in a relationship funnel, we would want the right leads to be present for that. Right? Because it used to be that everyone and their brother would hop on these types of free trainings. And that is just no longer the case.
People need to really care to come to a free training. And so if you've met them through traffic means, which remember means lower quality, lower loyalty to you, the odds that they show up and show up ready to act are very low. Leanne didn't share her actual numbers, but I'm guessing they're not great in terms of a show up rate. And again, Leanne, this is not your fault. The market's just not in alignment with this type of marketing right now. And so if you haven't met them in what I call a powerful way in that first step, they're not going to show up to your second step to that free masterclass. Or even if they do show up, they're not going to show up ready to buy.
So we need to meet them in a more powerful way, in a more relationship-based way up top in that first step. We need to replace that social media with something that's a little more powerful. Then Leanne goes on to say, “This is the business coaching advice that I've been given. I've not gotten one client, not even a free call booked.” Again, what does this tell me? It's that low quality of lead. This is just not going to happen for you in this way because you haven't met them powerfully enough. You have not met them. through a relationship strategy. You met them through social media, which is a traffic strategy, and so they're not gonna step up to the plate, and they're not gonna respond really well to that free training.
And then Leanne says, “Do you have some other recommendations so I can get some clients and generate some much needed revenue?” Absolutely. You need to meet your leads more powerfully. I've already alluded to this, but let's talk about what that actually means. When you are posting on social media, when in that first step of marketing, you are using a traffic-based strategy, what you are generally doing is you are being a little bit passive. You are posting on your platforms, and by your platforms, I mean your profile on a social media site, and you are hoping that somehow people find you, right? You are hoping that the algorithm exposes you to people who find your content interesting, follow you, and then continue on.
I need you to think in the opposite way with this. Because when you're meeting people in that way, there is just no loyalty. There is no trust. There's nothing that has an impact when you're first meeting them. You are just in a sea of similar content. There's nothing that really helps you stand out, even if your content is exceptional, just because of the way people are interacting with it. So instead, Leanne, and anybody who's listening to this where this sounds familiar, what I want you to do is think about how you can have a more powerful meeting with folks. And in a relationship funnel, the best way that you can meet folks is by doing something that I inelegantly call borrowing an audience.
What do I mean by borrowing an audience? I want you to find a way to go meet your audience where they already are gathering. And I don't mean already gathering on a social media site. They're not gathering in that way. I mean gathering in some sort of organized way where they have raised their hands and said, I want to be here and I want to listen to this information. Great examples are podcasts that have an established audience, a conference that people are choosing to attend, maybe a mastermind or business coaching program that people have signed up for. You're looking for where are your ideal clients gathered.
And then you want to think, how can I invite myself or gain an invitation to go speak to those people where they're already gathered? Because when you go and insert yourself into an audience that has already gathered, you're going to have a very different experience and a much more powerful meeting of them than you are when you just hope that they find your profile.
So, Leanne, if you're a coach, I would love for you to be thinking about where your potential clients are already gathering. Like if you're doing life coaching, maybe your clients are already gathering in spiritual spaces of some kind. Maybe they're gathering at yoga studios. Maybe they're gathering in different places. Maybe they're listening to podcasts. And you could build a relationship with a podcast host and go get on and be a guest of that podcast. Or maybe you can go speak at a yoga retreat.
If you're a business coach, you can think about where are entrepreneurs gathering who might need your information and how can you go insert yourself into those audiences, right? This one's a little easier to think through. Where are entrepreneurs gathering? They're gathering at conferences, they're gathering in podcasts, they're gathering in masterminds. How can you go be a guest teacher at a mastermind? How can you think through where they have already gathered and they're already in a space that they trust, and you can gain an invitation to that space and go add some value to it. That's what relationship marketing looks like, is it looks like ‘how can I go be a part of a community that already exists and go add value to that community, go drop into that community as a guest and really add a ton of value to them.’ As opposed to a traffic strategy, right, is sitting back and saying, I sure hope that LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever is gonna show my post to a bunch of people who somehow read it and decide to follow me and decide to engage with me.
You can feel the energy there is so different, right? When you are welcomed into a space and you have gained an invitation to come join people where they have already gathered, you're already given the benefit of the doubt and they're excited to meet you. They're excited to hear what you have to say. So before you even open your mouth and say anything, they already trust you and they're already really receptive to your message. And so when then you do share something of value, they're excited to hear it and they're ready to respond and they're ready to follow up in your free class. As opposed to the energy, behind, again, you know, a traffic-based social media post that somebody happens to see. Sure, maybe they click the like, or maybe they say, ‘thank you so much, I needed to hear this today,’ but they don't really know who you are, and you're not really having the impact that you want. You're not really centering the relationship the way that you are when you go find them where they're already gathered.
So Leanne, the best advice I have for you is to rethink how you are meeting your leads. And I want you to be a little bit more proactive about this and think about where are they already gathered and how can you go get an invitation to join them in those spaces as opposed to sitting back, posting on your own profiles and hoping they somehow find you. I've thrown a lot at you right now. So let's review what we've talked about today.
Review
Marketing lives on a continuum. We want to picture a line. And we want to picture all the relationship strategies on the left half of that line and all the traffic strategies on the right half of that line. And then you want to remember that each product and service is best served by a specific combination, a specific place on that continuum. Some combination of relationship and traffic strategies is in alignment with your product mix.
And in general, If you sell things that are high cost, custom services, they don't even have to be custom, but more high cost services, and you don't need a ton of leads per year, you are going to be more aligned with relationship marketing strategies. If you sell something that is lower cost and relies on a high quantity of leads going through a funnel, you are going to be better aligned with traffic marketing strategies.
Now I want to emphasize, there is nothing wrong with either relationship or traffic marketing. Sometimes we have this conversation and people get confused and they think there might be something wrong with either of these. There is nothing wrong with each of these strategies. The only thing wrong is when you don't consciously choose which one you're going to use and then end up using the wrong strategy for what you're selling. And this also doesn't mean that you won't borrow strategies from the other side. But when you do that, you want to make sure that you're prioritizing meeting people in a way that aligns with how you need to market and which side of the continuum you want to be on.
We talked about this a little with Leanne's question, right? Her second strategy, her free masterclass, that can actually work on both the relationship and the traffic sides of things. Maybe you run them a little bit differently and there's a little bit of nuance, but essentially a free masterclass can work with both relationship and traffic marketing. But where it's not going to work is if you're not meeting the people correctly. So that very first interaction with your leads is very critical to get it correct and to use either the correct relationship or traffic strategy based on what your product or service is. And so that means that your first and most important job is always to consider the meat and to make sure, especially if it's a relationship, that you're not abdicating that meat to another platform or algorithm. Don't let LinkedIn, don't let Instagram dictate how you are going to meet your leads. You need to think through ‘where are my leads gathering that are not on algorithm based platforms and how can I go insert myself into that conversation and add value where they're already at.’ I need you to take charge of that meet yourself. When you do that, when you start getting yourself aligned with the correct side of the marketing continuum, that's where we start to see real progress being made.
And that's where we come back to sequence over strategy, my friends, because listen, Leanne could be running the most intelligent social media content ever. She could be writing things that are absolutely wonderful. She could be absolutely nailing the execution of her strategies, but because it's not in alignment, because she didn't ask the correct question first. She didn't ask questions in the right order. She didn't first ask, ‘am I relationship or traffic marketing?’ It does not matter how good she is at her social media because she shouldn't be doing it. Or at least she shouldn't be doing it in order to meet her clients.
And that is the important part of sequence over strategy and understanding doing things in the correct order is more important than, you know, executing a strategy correctly. Because you could be executing a strategy absolutely flawlessly, but if it's not the correct one for that moment, and if it's not in alignment, it's still not going to work. And so we don't want you wasting your time doing that. So when we're talking about relationship or traffic and we're talking about marketing, we're talking about all the strategies that are flying in your face that you have to choose from. I want you to just hit the stop sign and don't get caught up in which strategy you're going to choose. First question you ask is, am I relationship marketing or am I traffic marketing? And then you can start choosing strategies that are in alignment with your answer to which side of the continuum you are best aligned with. based on which products or services you offer?
Thank you, Leanne, so much for that question. It's a critical one because as I've said a few times, you are not the only one facing this. We have this conversation day in and day out in my community to understand that difference between relationship and traffic marketing. And that is exactly what we're going to do on this show. I'm going to be back every other week with a new episode of Sequence Over Strategy. And every other week, I'm gonna be breaking down a question very similar to this one so that you can start seeing the same questions that I see every day and we can start having you think in terms of sequence over strategy so that you can start making progress with your business and making progress towards building that sustainable and steady business that I know you all want. So make sure you subscribe so that you do not miss an episode. And if you'd like me to answer your question on this podcast, head over to themichellewarner.com/sos and tell me what you're wrestling with.