This fall, your Monday Morning Coffee will be all the more rich and rewarding. That’s because you’ll be sipping in the glow of football season. The Friday night lights, the band playing the fight song and the smell of soft pretzels all contribute to the magic that hangs on through Monday morning.
Maybe it’s your local high school team or maybe you can’t wait to see the Chiefs suit up for another exciting season. No matter what level of football you love, it’s hard not to see how the same principles that make for a good football team also make for a good marketing strategy.
Winning Takes Preparation: Your football team doesn’t just show up on Friday night and say “let’s win this.” They’ve prepared to win with endless hours of practice and running through plays. They lift weights, do drills and run plays over and over.
Your marketing team can do the same. Developing your brand is a lot like the ongoing and physically taxing preparation that a football team uses. You don’t just show up at the door of another business and expect them to hand you a sale.
You put in tireless hours of posting content on social media, then engaging in conversations with commenters. You sponsor local teams, show up to charity events and donate to the team’s trivia night. Day after day, you’re building brand awareness. A football team doesn’t get ready to win a game in one day; marketers don’t make a sale in a single day, either. Both require ongoing investment.
You’ve Got to Find the Gaps: Successful football teams find the gaps in the opposing team’s defense. Looking for those critical holes, they move the ball down the field to a touchdown.
Your business must also find the gaps. When you look across your market, there are specific problems that your product addresses. You may offer a unique return policy or your founder may have unparalleled experience in the industry. Looking at the gaps in your competitors’ strategies, you find your niche in the market and differentiate yourself.
Consistency Leads to Scoring: A football team that doesn’t score won’t win. A marketing team that never delivers leads won’t see any growth.
Just as a football team analyzes its plays to determine which will lead them to a victory, your marketing team must understand which activities lead to actual sales. You can spend hours on social media every day or send out one direct mailer after another, but if you can’t prove that they are resulting in sales, you are falling short.
Identify which behaviors are connected with sales and then consistently include those techniques in your strategy.
At SJC Marketing, we’ve been at the edge of our seats waiting for football season since the last one ended. Whether you want to talk marketing or football or both, contact us today.