The Lily Pad Strategy: How to Build a Marketing Ecosystem That Works Without You
Old-school marketing was a straight line. You ran an ad, someone clicked through to your website, they bought. Done.
That's not how people buy anymore. Today it's an ecosystem – a whole network of places where people bump into your business, get to know you, and eventually decide to buy. And the more of those places you have working together, the more likely you are to make the sale.
I call it the lily pad strategy.
What's a lily pad?
Every channel in your business is a lily pad: your Instagram, your Facebook page, your website, your email list, your SMS, your Facebook group, your blog, your podcast. Even offline ones count – a networking event, your local footy club, a market stall.
Your customers are the frogs, jumping from one lily pad to the next. Every jump is a touch point. And here's the catch: each lily pad has to be a lander. It has to give people somewhere to go next.
Because if they don't land on your lily pads, unfortunately, they're landing on someone else's.
Why ads alone won't save you
Ads are not your silver bullet, and anybody who tells you otherwise – please don't listen to them.
Ads are one portion of the entire ecosystem. If the rest of your ecosystem isn't running, you're pouring money into ads that have nowhere to send people. You want your ecosystem to do most of the heavy lifting, and your ads to be the icing on top.
Ads will always amplify what's already working. So build what works first.
What my ecosystem looks like
When I started Only The Sweet Stuff, I had no agency and no big budget. Here's the path most customers take today:
Organic social – three to four posts a day. Lots of crafting videos. This is my top of funnel, and I don't pay for it.
Website – built trust-first, with trust badges and our mission front and centre.
Pop-up – an email sign-up offer. The real goal isn't the discount; it's capturing the email.
Welcome email flow – our story (family-owned, started in the front room), tutorials, then an invitation to join our Facebook group.
Facebook group – our community. When someone joins, I know they're near the bottom of my funnel.
Weekly emails – a mid-week value email with no selling at all, then an offer email at the end of the week.
Retargeting ads – only to people already in my ecosystem.
By the time someone is in my email flow, they're probably at around touch point number eight – and I haven't spent a cent to get them there.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket
When the Optus outage hit, I was completely cut off from my community – because my community was all online, in one place. It was a big lesson.
Now I push email hard, and I've added SMS. You own your email list. You don't own your followers – the platform does. If one lily pad disappears, the others need to keep the frogs hopping.
Be the TV show, not the commercial
Some people love the ads between TV shows. Most of us get up to do the washing or grab a glass of water.
Your ecosystem should be the TV show. Educate, entertain, share behind-the-scenes, answer questions, build community. Save the selling for the right moment – when someone is genuinely ready.
Don't be a billboard. Don't be the flyer that ends up in the letterbox. Even when you're paying for space in someone's feed, you still have to be social.
It has to run without you
The best ecosystems run on autopilot. Your welcome flow, abandoned cart emails, post-purchase emails and retargeting ads should all keep working while you're packing orders, picking up the kids or – heaven forbid – on holiday.
That's the difference between campaigns and ecosystems. Campaigns stop when the brief is closed. An ecosystem keeps working.
How do you know which post made the sale?
Short answer: you can't. And that's okay, because it's an ecosystem.
Don't rely on any one platform's numbers to tell you the whole story – especially Facebook's. Keep your own simple spreadsheet of sales, costs and ad spend, and look at the big picture: conversion rate, average order value, email revenue and where your traffic is coming from.
Map your own ecosystem
Do this exercise this week:
List every lily pad you have – online and offline.
Draw the jumps. Where does each one send people next? Is every lily pad a lander?
Count your touch points from first contact to purchase.
Find the gaps. Where are people landing and going nowhere? That's where they're leaking out.
Check your data (Google Analytics, Shopify, your email platform) and revisit it monthly.
Start with what you have. Make each lily pad point to the next. Then, and only then, add ads to speed things up.
This article is based on webinars originally delivered as part of the Digital Solutions program. For more, explore the full Collab Co Academy.
Comments