Digital Marketing Strategy Shotgun or Rifle Approach

07/08/2014 By Waka Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Shotgun vs. Rifle approach

“Should I use shotgun or rifle approach for hunting?” It’s been a critical question for businesses on social media.

According to Jay Baer at the Social Fresh Conference, it might be the time to return to the Shotgun approach.

The shotgun approach aims to build a touch-point corral.

Reliable reach is almost nil.

In social media, the chances of reaching the ‘right people’ barely exist because…

Not everyone wants to be a publisher. The youth are gravitating towards WhatsApp or Snapchat, where they connect within exclusive groups of friends.
The competition is fierce. You are virtually competing against everyone, not just your competitors. Your Facebook feeds consist of posts from companies, friends and family. People can’t simply give attention to every post. So naturally many would choose to consume posts of adorable cats instead of others.
Facebook’s priority is to make profits for themselves. Except Pinterest, most of them are now public-owned corporations. So they won’t give you organic reach that easily for free.

Time to shoot all over the place?

There is very few reliable reach out there today. So why be bothered with spending lots of time creating high-quality content?

It is tiring and less effective. Maybe it is time to switch back to a shotgun that fires bullets across all platforms. It will also increase the probability of being noticed and reaching those who really likes what you say.

The key implications:

Same content in multiple platforms (with customised messages),
You will need to increase the quantity and platforms,
You will spend ‘’a little bit of time on many sites leaning enough to get by’’,
Your name will be everywhere,
More publications require more resources.

Is the Shotgun really a solution?

Baer has clearly interesting points here. But we don’t know. Perhaps it is not the only solution to today’s competitive social media landscape.

A La Carte social media strategy

Are you using social media as a place for advertisement or a link to your own channels? If your priority is to nurture relationships with current clients, shotgun style might not offer you much insight.

If you are a small local business, the shotgun approach sounds nothing but a waste of resource. There is another paradox: the youth are moving (back) to private messaging. One of the reasons is because they are getting tired of tons of paid advertisements on Facebook. So does relentless shootings of content really help you reach audience without annoying them? I love Paul Smith but I don’t want to hear from them every two hours.

So, depending on who you are, the shotgun style might or might not be worth considering.

The bottom line is: there is no such thing as a universal approach in digital marketing. Even a shotgun needs some customisation to make it work better sometimes.