What Tools to Use When

Focus determines direction.

I have a confession. For a long time I picked marketing tools the way some people pick restaurants: by what I liked. I liked email, so clients got email. I did not enjoy cold calling, so cold calling was quietly declared “dead.” It took a client whose customers never opened an email but answered every phone call to show me how much of my “strategy” was really just my own comfort.

So let me say the rule plainly, because it took me too long to learn it: the combination of tools you use is decided by the audience you are going after and by the campaign you are running, and what you like or dislike does not enter into it. Your preferences are not on the list of factors.

There is such a thing as the wrong tool

Every tool works. Pay per click works. Search optimization works. Social media, networking, in-house email, television, radio, direct mail, magazines and newspaper, telemarketing, email through other people’s lists, all of them work. Which one is the right one? All of them, somewhere, for someone. The question is never whether a tool works. The question is whether it is the right tool for this job.

Because there absolutely is a wrong tool for the right job. Social media is a wrong tool for a burst pipe. Nobody with water pouring through the ceiling is scrolling their feed; they are typing “emergency plumber” into a search bar. Search is a wrong tool for a brand new kind of service nobody knows to search for yet. Direct mail is a wrong tool for reaching twenty-year-olds and a fine tool for reaching homeowners who have lived on the same street for thirty years.

And there is such a thing as the right tool at the wrong moment. Radio is a fine tool for building recognition over months. It is a poor tool for filling Tuesday’s empty tables by Tuesday. Same tool; different job.

Start with the person, then the moment

When I plan a campaign now, I ask two questions before I ever name a tool. First: who exactly am I talking to? Skip “homeowners” and think of the person whose air conditioner just quit in July, or the young couple who just closed on their first house, or the office manager who is tired of the cleaning company not showing up. Where does that specific person spend their attention? What do they read, who do they trust, what do they do when the problem hits?

Second: what is the moment? Am I reaching them while the problem is happening, before it happens, or long after, when I want them to remember me? Urgent problems point toward search, your Google listing and being findable in the moment. Planned purchases point toward content, reviews, referrals and staying in touch. Long-term recognition points toward the slower tools like signage, radio, community presence and consistent social.

Only once I know the person and the moment do I open the toolbox. And I usually take out two or three tools, not ten, because two tools used well beat ten used thinly every time.

Every tool leads to the same few places

Here is something that simplifies the whole picture. No matter which tool you pick, it is pointing the person toward one of three places: your website, your phone or your physical location. A flyer points at a door or a web address. A radio ad points at a phone number that leads to your office, or a site. A search result points at your site. A social post points at your site or your shop.

That means your website and your front door sit outside the toolbox: they are the destination every tool aims at. If the destination is broken, the tools do not matter. A perfect ad that lands people on a website with no phone number has wasted the ad. A great flyer that sends people to a shop with no sign has wasted the flyer. Fix the destination first, then worry about the traffic.

Before you spend anything

Pick one thing you sell. Write down, in a sentence, the specific person who buys it and the moment when they decide they need it. Then look at the tool list and pick the two tools that meet that person in that moment, with one line on why each one fits.

This takes two or three hours of honest thinking and costs nothing. The tools themselves range from free to whatever budget you set, but choosing them well is the free part, and it is the part most people skip.