Marketing strategies that move you out of the water into the sky, and keep you happily flapping your wings in formation to your destination of success?When you consider the goose as he takes off into flight, flapping and slapping the water, running along on webbed feet in an attempt to lift off into the wild blue yonder, you might see yourself as a business startup. I know, I did. I struggled for the longest time to figure out how to flap my wings with marketing and bring in enough buying clients to move my business off center. Then it happened. Like magic, the clients began to arrive at my door.If you’re not a bird watcher, you may have missed snow geese flying south each winter in V formation. But having grown up in the cross hairs of goose hunters, I learned to watch for the signs of their arrival. What a magnificent time for a drive to the lakes… During the day, when goose hunters were likely resting up for their early morning hunts, we would take off for the lakes and watch the geese. Snow Geese are predominantly white, with magnificent wide wings that catch the air in flight. They fly with a mix of systematic flapping and lunging forward to push the current.After thirty plus years of watching them, it isn’t hard to connect the dots between the persistence of the snow goose and workable marketing strategies. I’ll share my insights.1 – Geese know a good market when they see one. Every year, as they head south for the winter, Snow Geese find their way back to the lakes and fields of southeastern Colorado where they know they’ll find good water and plenty of food for their trip. They lounge around on early ice pads, dip into the water for bugs and minnows a plenty, and fly to nearby fields to graze until their bellies are full. Then, they rest for the trip.Finding a good market means knowing what you need. Your business needs buyers that are hungry for what you offer. Once you know your product or service is viable, valuable, and desired, the only thing left to do is offer it up to the right market of buyers. Taking your products to the right buyers and fulfilling those needs is key to making bank. Marketing strategies include a good buyer market.2 – Geese return to the same market year after year. Geese come back year after year. Some brilliant scientists and observers tagged some of the geese with little wristlets on their legs and started following their migration. Once they arrive in an area, they return to that area year after year for the same resource.Residual markets are important to your professional and business success. Once you find the right market, it’s important that you keep going back year after year, to be sure that market remains yours. Find ways to check back with your customers, because they may not remember your name. Call them. Return and offer any new products or services. Make sure they know you’re still available to serve them. Marketing strategies include repeat buyers.3 – Geese never leave stragglers behind. When you watch geese lift off, you’ll notice some of the younger, stronger geese always stay behind to make sure the whole flock is in flight, before they take off. And they circle. Their V formation begins as they lift off, and they circle the area until all geese are in flight. Then they take off in the direction of their chosen path.In business, you reach out and connect. You network to bring in all of your market share. Invite referrals. Talk to people and share what you have. Invite them to visit your website. Ask them to try your products. Offer your services to everyone in your market, because if you’re not serving them, they miss out on the opportunity. Be sure you don’t leave stragglers behind. The best marketing strategies keep track of buyer markets.4 – Geese take turns leading the flock.The V formation of flying allows geese to naturally rotate out the lead birds. Flying is hard work, and remember I said their flight is a combination of systematic flapping and lunging? That lead bird is breaking the way for the flock, and when he tires, someone else steps up and takes the lead.When you’re watching a larger flock of geese, sometimes you’ll see three or four V formations within the same flock. That’s because there are leaders at different levels. The larger the flock, the more V-Leaders you’ll see.As a professional marketer, you’ll need to rely on others occasionally to get the job done, or to learn new processes. Like geese, we can’t always be leaders, sometimes we need to step back and follow. Don’t be afraid to fall into line behind another strong leader occasionally. You’ll be ready to take the lead again when it’s your turn. Marketing strategies have room for both leading and following.5 – Geese are strong and capable, resilient even. That lead goose has to be able to withstand wind and air turbulents, and strong enough to keep moving forward, even through storms. He has to know the direction they’re traveling and be able to maintain good speed. Last I knew, geese don’t have GPS, but they do have great memories, because like I said before – they always return to the same locations. They’re strong and capable of battling winds and nature to get where they need to go.Mother nature isn’t always kind, she occasionally sends them on their way, and greets them with a storm before they arrive. Geese weather the storms well.Being a business owner requires you to be strong and capable. Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep up your strength and abilities to get things done. Don’t hesitate to ask for help – mentors are plenty – and everyone needs sustenance to keep going. Marketing strategies must be resilient.6 – Geese encourage each other always. All that honking you hear when a flock of geese fly over, is encouragement. They’re encouraging each other to keep flying. Now, those of us who know geese, understand that it’s generally a noise geese make when they lunge forward, because they’re exerting a tremendous amount of effort. But the honking encourages other geese to keep lunging too. The longer they’re in flight, the more they honk.However, here’s a point you need to know. When the leader is at the point of the V, he doesn’t honk. When he takes the lead, he isn’t honking, he’s flying. The other geese keep honking to encourage and motivate him to keep flying.Encouragement can take you where you need to be. Seriously. More often than not, when I feel like I can’t get through the day, all it takes is a little encouragement to go on. As a leader, it’s your job to listen and know where you’re taking your team. You don’t have to talk all the time, sometimes you need to listen.In my hometown, there’s a group called Honkers. They’re part of the local Chamber of Commerce and they recognize new business owners and show up to HONK them. They promote new business owners and invite them to join the Chamber. It’s a great way to acknowledge, support, and encourage business owners.Marketing strategies that work best encourage others. 7 – Geese mate for life. Geese pick a mate and mate for life. They travel with their mate, raise geese with their mate, and their flocks are made up of matched pairs. Except when they aren’t.I’m sure there’s an animal lover somewhere who will be offended by this, but geese are food. Hunters hunt food. And the key here is that sometimes geese lose their mates. Whether it’s to a hunter or a storm, the result is the same, and one goose goes on alone with the flock.They take flight and fly away.All this to point out that in business, we often have struggles. We lose our business partner, or a business, and we must carry on. We have to step up and over, and take flight. I’m not going to tell you it’s easy, but I will tell you that it’s easier if you’ve built a tribe of support to surround you, and you can lean on your leaders and those around you to motivate you and keep you using your marketing strategies and building your business.Marketing strategies can help you overcome the worst business disaster, and are considerate of your personal life events. They don’t end when things get rough, the best ones are designed with support systems to help you through.Don’t let a life struggle or a business disaster take you down.

Know a good market when you find it.

Think residual. Market to the same folks again.

Never leave a client behind.

Take turns in leadership. Sometimes, follow well.

Be strong and confident.

Encourage and be encouraged always.

Life isn’t easy, do it anyway.

Your clients are counting on you to find a marketing strategy that works, because they need what you offer. Don’t let them down.

There are some social marketing services that you should definitely be using if you want to start getting more traffic to your website. The ultimate aim of social marketing is to spread the word. It’s a form of viral marketing. In the old days of internet marketing, you had to manually set up referral marketing campaigns and do things such as eBook marketing to get people to pass around your content, and get free visitors back to your site.In today’s times however, social marketing has highly evolved. There are more than 1 way to get referral and viral traffic back to your site automatically without you doing a thing. But you have to make sure that you know what you’re doing with the traffic once you get it. But that’s a topic for a different day. There are tons of social marketing services out there that can boost your credibility, reputation in your niche, and ultimately income.Now what you don’t want to do is use poor social marketing services that can get you banned from sites, or even get you blacklisted. Some people find this out the hard way. If you think buying 5,000 Facebook likes, or 5,000 subscribers to your Twitter account is an effective way to market and get more sales online, you’re definitely wrong. Some people think that if they just can “look good” online people will think they’re an expert and then will start buying from them. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.People don’t buy because they think you’re popular. People buy because they believe you have a good solution to a bad problem that they have. If all you have to offer is 5,000 Facebook likes to a person who’s having acne problems, then you won’t get the sale. So don’t invest in social marketing services that will only make you look good, but doesn’t have any effect on how much sales and profits that you get.Now I mentioned that I wanted to go over some social marketing services that you should be using to get traffic to your website. I’m about to list some of my favorite tools to use and how I use them, and how you can use them also to get the positive results in your business that you’re looking for. And don’t be afraid to invest in paid social marketing services also, because sometimes these paid services offer automation tools that are worth the money. Here’s the first social marketing service that you should be using:1) TwellowTwellow is like the “Yellow Pages” for Twitter. If you want more Twitter followers, this is where you should start. You can sign up here and browse through your niche categories, and start following people who have similar websites or Twitter profiles that you have. This is a free and easy way to start getting more Twitter followers without having to resort to a software that may get you banned from Twitter.In fact, a long time ago there was this paid automated software that was very popular called “Tweet Adder”. It was so popular that a second version was made and it was called “Tweet Adder 2″. It allowed you to massively get thousands of related Twitter users to follow you and start marketing to them.Needless to say, it was so successful and popular (and against Twitter’s terms of service) that anyone who was found to have used it at any point was banned from Twitter.People were building massive Twitter followings and using their “direct message” box (DM) to solicit leads and traffic from people. This got out of hand and a solution was needed to stop this poor practice from continuing. So peoples’ accounts got disabled, and they were no longer to use their Twitter profile to acquire business. And ultimately, “Tweet Adder” was shut down and discontinued. Here’s another social marketing service that you should be using:2) HootsuiteNow I did mention earlier that there are some paid social marketing services that you can use to automate your marketing. Hootsuite is one of these tools. Hootsuite provides a wide range of social marketing tasks that can be performed. And it’s 100% legal and doesn’t violate any terms of services on the social media platforms and websites online.One of my favorite features of Hootsuite is its ability to have your social media content posted automatically. What you would do is input some pre-inserted content into Hootsuite and specify when you want the content to be sent out. This saves a lot of time and if you have a website that already has a ton of content on it, this would be a great way to get it syndicated on the internet.And as you already know, if people on your social media accounts like what you are sending them, they are going to forward your information to their friends and colleagues also – give you more free eyeballs to your website and content. Hootsuite is great, and offers a TON of other social marketing services, but just this 1 alone is worth the investment.Here’s another social marketing service that you should be using:3) AddThisAddThis is social media button platform that allows people to instantly share your content automatically on their social media accounts. AddThis allows you to insert code onto your website or blog, and have social media icons appear on every page of your site. If someone lands on a page on your site or blog that has great content, they can instantly click on a social media button on your page and share your content with their followers.This is a quick and easy way to get free syndication without you doing a thing. And AddThis is free!These 3 social marketing services are tools that you will want to use if you want to strengthen your social marketing campaigns and obviously get more traffic to your website. They’re simple, and while 1 is paid (Hootsuite), it’s highly recommended that you invest in it for the longevity of your website and business.