Can This Be Blitzed?

Blitz: def: any swift, vigorous attack, barrage, or defeat (dictionary.com)

We’ve been in talks recently with a prospective client who wanted us to send out a promotion, among social media, for her upcoming classes.

The problem? She doesn’t have a social media presence.

She wanted to ‘test’ our services with one-time ‘blitz.’

Hmmm… I wasn’t sure how to approach this as she’s fairly new to the world of social media and marketing on the web. I was thinking, “How do I explain that social media is not a one-time blitz?”

Dilemma # 1 – A Website that Stinks

She has an existing website (very poorly done). We submitted the project proposal and she said, “But I already have a website and it’s not making any money.”

Our response, “Who is doing your marketing?”

She didn’t reply, which of course, means, that no one is doing any marketing for her. No marketing, no traffic, no people, no money…period.

Her existing website is much like the billboard alongside an empty highway.

Dilemma #2 – No Social Media

Another big issue is that she has no social media presence at all. She’s not on Facebook, doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile, nor is she on Twitter.

Who would we ‘blitz’ this out to? Without a social media presence, she doesn’t have any fans, followers or connections.

Dilemma #3 – A Year of No Contact

Issue # 3 is that she took most of 2010 off from her business, with no contact to her email list during that time.

If you are not connecting with your list each and every month, after a year of no contact, they will forget about you.

So, even if we sent this out to her list, without having any contact with them for over a year, I seriously question what the response rate would be. Besides, email campaigns are not a one-time gig unless your strategy is direct response marketing, but that’s a whole other ball game.

WOW! Talk about a challenging lineup of circumstances.

Our Recommendations

Of course, our recommendations to her are that we recreate her web presence. She needs a brand new website with integrated blog to tell her stories and she has some fascinating ones!

She needs a social media presence that, over time, will allow her to attract the right audience looking for her services and products.

We explained to her that social media and a solid web presence is an ongoing process, not a one-time blitz and used the comparison of building relationships vs. direct response.

We run into this similar scenario every once in a while with a small business owner who simply doesn’t understand how social media or the web works, yet they know this is where they need to be.

Some of them still try to do it themselves… 2, 3 or more years later, they still don’t have it together, like this particular person.

She needs to let the professionals (us) do what we do best, so that she can do what she does best.