It’s time to gear up for March Madness, so here’s your much-anticipated basketball analogy for this month’s deep dive. This fast-moving sport brings a lot to mind because like marketing, it looks like a lot of chaos out on the court, but if you know about basketball, you know there’s a lot of strategy going on.
Like with any basketball game, you want a decisive win in marketing. You don’t want a nail-biter that heads into overtime. How can you get things moving in the right direction in the first quarter?
Run Your Plays: Basketball teams practice plays and require team members to be well-versed in them in order to get time on the court. If you have a rogue member of your team who tends to pop up a three-point attempt rather than run plays, it’s time to rein them in. They’re wasting time and opportunities.
When we translate this to marketing, instead of shooting from the line, are you posting randomly on social media or inconsistent in using the correct voice and color scheme for your branding? Working from a documented marketing strategy gives everyone guidance, so nobody is going rogue or trying out new techniques without a strategy behind it.
Give the Ball to the Point Guard, Already: Your point guard is your best ball handler and if you want to avoid going into overtime, you let them do what they do best. They set up the plays and watch for the gaps, bringing the ball down the court.
Your team also needs to think about who handles each area of marketing best. If you have a naturally social, outgoing person, that’s who should be talking on your videos, not your highest-ranking, most-senior member who doesn’t feel comfortable behind a camera.
Likewise, let your best writer come up with blog and social media posts. If you don’t have the specialist on your team for each of these areas, consider outsourcing to a marketing agency that offers what you need.
Know the Rules: Some of the rules in marketing are as obvious, just like in basketball. You know to avoid traveling in basketball or giving your opposing player a good, hard shove as you go by.
In marketing, you know not to trash your competitor in a social post or fail to make good on a promotional offer. However, there may be other marketing “rules” that you aren’t using, such as being sure to respond on social media when you receive a negative comment or complaint. Responding quickly to negativity is a good way to not only restore the customer relationship but show your broader audiences that you take responsibility when a customer is unhappy.
Review and Revise: Even at the high school level, coaches take time to watch clips of their own teams, analyzing where they need to try a different defense or get back to fundamentals on a particular play. They also watch the skills of their competitors to see what kind of defense they favor, who their best shooter is and what teams have done in the past to stop that shooter.
In marketing, you’ve got to dig into your analytics to see where your strategy needs to be revisited. Maybe you dedicated too much of your budget to SEO (search engine optimization) methods and didn’t realize you should have set some resources aside for PPC (pay per click).
You may also find out that certain subject lines in your email marketing lead to better engagement, or that when you do some digging, your audience spends more time on a new social media platform than you realized.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on competitors. Like any great basketball team, you don’t want to imitate their signature style, but you do want to know a little bit about their strategy. It allows you to find the gaps in the market or the weak spot in their approach and capture more of the attention of your audience.
Go For the Buzzer-Beater: You start hearing the crowd yell, “Shoot! Shoot!!” and you look up to see that the clock is speeding through the last ten seconds. Inevitably, the player with the ball will throw (or chuck it, really) down the court in an attempt to get one more point.
It may not be pretty, but every now and then it works, giving the team a narrow victory and avoiding overtime.
Your version of the buzzer-beater is simply doing that little bit extra that allows you to connect with your audience. Take a look at some of these strategic ideas:
- You do a mailing a couple of times a year, and you decide to add a QR code that leads to a landing page, giving you critical data about how your mailing is reaching audiences.
- You make a how-to video, and rather than making it a straightforward tone, you decide to go for some humor.
- You run a competition to get more people engaging with your social media marketing.
These aren’t items you would base your whole marketing strategy on, but they may be that little extra that brings you more brand awareness.
After all of these examples, the most important lesson from basketball may be to remember to celebrate your big win. Take time to high five and congratulate one another on that brilliant social media contest or a clever new tagline.
Whether you love March Madness and can’t wait to see all the upsets and excitement, or you have never so much as filled out a bracket, you may need a solid coach to help you execute your marketing. Contact us at SJC Marketing, where we love taking your team all the way!!