How can I get marketing results fast - is there a way besides traditional content marketing?

Our question comes from Steve in Santa Monica and the question is 'What do I do if I need to get results fast. I need clients coming through the door and I don't want to rely on just blogging, social media, and sort of traditional content marketing, which while incredibly effective, does take time to build up that kind of pipeline'?

I would recommend three different approaches.

Not knowing anything else about your marketing plan, not looking any deeper, I would say the first one is a PR because, while you have to shell out a certain amount of money to do effective PR and you've got to pay to play upfront, none the less, it can really take your business to another level and it can really do it quickly. The only condition is that your business is a disruptor. You can't just look at your business as a commodity, a clone business, you're doing the same thing as a dozen other competitors. It really needs to be something you are doing that stands way out from the herd. If you can do that, that story, that's gold for people who are looking to write about sort of cutting edge businesses, so PR is one angle.Another out of the three that I recommend is native advertising. Now, unlike traditional paper click ads, this is still content-based, this is still a lot like writing an article or a blog post, and it's not selling in that article or blog post, but the goal of the content piece is that people will take an action. That may be to fill out a form, become a member of your mailing list, it may be to buy a product, it may be to engage you for a service, but the idea is to write thick, substantive, real content and put that in a paid venue alongside other content that isn't advertising but does consist of articles. It's an effective tool when used properly. It's cutting edge right now, it's not going to last forever, but this is a great opening, so while it lasts, this is something that you can get into to potentially have really fast results.And the third is networking, also called network marketing, not to be confused with multi-level marketing pyramid schemes and that sort of thing. By networking, I mean, if you are in a major metropolitan area, there are groups you can join where there's only one of any kind of profession and the goal is not to sort of sell each other, but to dip into each others Rolodexes, or rather dip into your own Rolodex, and refer people to those in your network. So, it can help extend the reach that you have currently many many fold over, in other words, you can reach a much larger audience with information about your business, insights about how you are different, and just referrals.

So again, the three things are PR, native ads, and networking. Those things should speed up the process, again, all things being equal. If you would like to submit your mail to the MadPipe mailbag, just go to madpipe.com/mail.