Balancing effort and ease in marketing

In yoga, we help our students strike a balance in their poses between effort (sthira) and ease (sukha). But in marketing your wellbeing business, it often feels like way too much sthira.

Often the fundamental issue found in most marketing efforts is you – you need to get out of the way of your customers online.

Despite businesses spending big ad bucks online, user-generated endorsements are superior because they generate trust. People trust their peers. How-to guides, product reviews on YouTube, re-Tweets, and the Facebook ‘like’ button are worth way more than a paid ad.

Simply put – what others say about you is worth way more than what you say about yourself.

Exert effort - sthira

  • Set up access to Facebook, Twitter or whatever social media you use on your mobile and update it on the go. Take photos of places you visit, promote other businesses you like, and let people know what you’re doing.
  • Schedule regular time to analyse your marketing, including checking and recording your website stats, your fans’ activities on your social networks, and the new bookings or customers you get as a result of money spent on ads.
  • Use your stats to set up a ‘to do’ list of tasks.

Take it easy - sukha

  • Get your product or service into the hands of active online socialisers. If it’s truly great, socialisers are likely to recommend it to friends for whom they think it will be useful.
  • Listen twice as much as you talk on social networks – add a discussion board and review mechanism to your Facebook fan page and don’t delete negative or ambivalent reviews. People expect and rely on objective peer analyses; if they detect ‘spin’, they’ll leave and not return.
  • If you’re going through an emotional rut, limit your time on social media to commenting (positively!) on what others are doing. No-one, except your close friends, wants to hear about your troubles.
  • Statistics are vital to gain insights into what is and isn’t working online. But creativity, gut instinct, anecdotal data, and emotional response give you the ‘whys’. Don’t be afraid to make decisions based on these … as well as statistics.
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