Deconstructing Marketing That Works…A Blue Print For Success

Deconstructing Marketing That Works…A Blue Print For Success

By Abe Kasbo.
The reason I enjoy sports so much, especially basketball, is because I get to see business in action. You see much of what business does everyday is to try to advance the ball, play defense, and score as much as possible, and perhaps get into the championship game and win.I see the world of business through the eyes of an athlete. And when you look at successful teams and successful business from a marketing perspective, they have a lot in common. This piece brings illustrates successful marketing tactics that work, through the prism of sports…here we go:

1. Fundamentals – successful marketers understand and practice the fundamentals until they are second nature. The fundamentals include: developing an integrated marketing and public relations plan, simplifying creative to deliver engaging key marketing messages quickly, and ensuring your frequency in the market by “owning” certain media to avoid dilution and maximize your investment. You see, much like shooting free-throws or doing basic lay-ups, the fundamentals must be reinforced daily to keep you on the right track.

2. Relevancy – In basketball having your point guard playing the power forward position will cost you the game, and it’s also a mistake to think that your market will come to you by doing the minimum. Make no mistake, it will cost you business. Businesses have to constantly strive to stay relevant. Apple’s relevancy is beyond it’s computers, ipods and iphones make apple relevant and in touch with their market. They position their brand in both advertising and culture with relatively simple, yet relevant messages that speak to current and future customers.

3. Strategy – The ball doesn’t just go in the basket, and you don’t get steals by just standing around. Strategy is your game plan and it should include:

1. Defining the relevancy of your product to your target market, by life cycle of the product and your customers
2. Identifying all possible media to reach your market
3. Integrating media, public relations, web, direct mail, sales, conferences, and any other traditional and non-traditional strategies to ensure the most effective results

4. Prioritize Media – Be sure to invest appropriately in media, but like a great asset manager, you must allocate your budget and efforts across the media that makes sense for your goals in order to get the best returns.

5. Execute – Down by 1, 3 seconds to go, your team has the ball underneath the opponent’s basket and a timeout. The coach draws up the play, the ball is inbounded, but the players don’t execute. Your team looses. The same for marketing and PR plans, in my experience, the execution is what counts. No good having a great strategy and plan if execution fails.

6. Innovate – Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls failed to advance in the playoffs for several years due to several factors including Michael’s seeming inability to share the basketball. Innovation came in the form of transformation, when Michael was convinced by his new coach Phil Jackson to change some habits, share the ball, and place the team’s priorities ahead of his individual game. Why is this innovation? It’s the same Michael. Yes, but the innovation came in the measured difference in execution.In marketing and PR, innovation can come from anywhere, we just have to pay attention and recognize it and execute against it.

7. Back to the Web – The web is the only medium that can aggregate and segment your market at the same time. So every marketing and PR initiative should have a web component. More to come…

Tags: Advertising, Branding, marketing strategy, web