There are a lot of ways to grow a forest, however as with most things in life you have limited time and limited resources so you only really want to consider strategies that take both of those factors into account. However, before we even cover any of that we need to bring to attention an often overlooked fact which is that the trees you plant need to produce delicious fruits. Simply put you want to make sure whatever service or product you’re marketing is actually worth having. A lot of marketing falls apart because the actual product or service sucks so it’s good to double check that your product is awesome ( remember you can’t polish a turd ). With that in mind let’s get started on the on the 2 part strategy you need to focus on as you build your forest ( grow your brand ).
The first step is making sure all of your trees can spread pollen. Your goal here is to make sure your stories are contagious and spread virally so that you are leveraging your customer’s word of mouth instead of your own marketing time or dollars. The ultimate test of the quality of your marketing and your product is whether people voluntarily tell their friends about it.
Next, if you’re going to need to be strategic about the soil you choose. You’re essentially creating a network of trees and you need to understand how your pollen is going to spread from one patch of land ( community of people ) to another so you can be smart about how you spend your limited time and energy. Crafting amazing stories is important but your ability to move that story from one mind to another truly defines your worth as a marketer. This process is both an art and a science and will require you to put together everything you’ve learned so far as well as being flexible to the changing nature of the field.
The resources in this section are going to teach you how to create contagious stories and strategically distribute them as well as remind you of the importance of having a quality product. They will cover the mindsets of how you should think about growing your brand and some tactics for spreading your message.
