Football fans rejoice – football season has finally arrived! Sunday’s have felt so lonely and boring these last 7 months. But who’s been counting?
What’s not to like – your favorite team grinding it out each and every week – laughing when your rivals lose – so your team can hold that elusive trophy next February.
But what you don’t know is football and businesses share a lot of similarities. You have departments of players or people – each with their own responsibilities and goals – working together to achieve the ultimate goal. Winning. Or in case of business – growing.
The end result in both entities is to reach the goal line, though.
But all too often companies attempt at throwing a hail mary to grow the business. For you non football fans – a hail mary pass is throwing the ball downfield for a quick touchdown.
So it made me curious – how many times have NFL teams won a game on a hail mary pass? Since 1975 in non play-off games – teams have won a football game via a hail mary pass a mere 19 times.
So out of roughly 16,384 NFL football games over last 31 years – only 19 times did a hail mary pass actually win the game. That’s a winning percentage of .11%. That’s unacceptable to any football team.
So why do you think this strategy will work with your business again?
What makes football teams succeed is steady drives – mixing up calls for short to mid gains – ultimately reaching the goal line.
Well – marketing takes a strategy right out of the offensive play book by creating steady drives that mix up different mediums to get to the goal line. By integrating a consistent message – gaining chunks of prospects or customers from various campaigns – you reach the goal line. One campaign won’t be “the” thing that will make your company grow. Its repetition, it’s changing things up, and keeping customers guessing as to what you’ll do next. (Think Apple)
Here are a few short yardage techniques to apply to your business to help you grow and reach the goal line.
1. What’s your website look like? If your site looks like the 2011 University of Maryland football special uniforms worn during the University of Miami game (even a gay blind fashion designer cringed at that one) – then it’s unlikely to retain visitors. Think of your website as your football stadium. It’s a home base. It’s a place where your customers and prospective customers go to see your product or service. If your stadium is old, has faded colors, and difficult to find your seats – how likely are you to want to return? But if you say – have the Dallas Cowboys stadium that has all the latest bells and whistles. Heck – everyone will want to go. Well – almost everyone. (see Giants, Redskins, and Eagles fans)
2. How do you drive people back to your site? Well – with football – it’s winning and having a good stadium But in business there are 3 ways: blogging, social media, and marketing related emails. Use the keywords people look for in your blogs and post to your site and social media outlets, communicate with them using social media, and sending them relevant emails that apply to their interests. The traffic to the Preactive Marketing website spikes every time we post a blog and share it via social media outlets.
3. You can’t force people to be your fans. I once received an email randomly from the Washington Redskins – with a message to their fans. No offense to Redskins fans – but that’s not my favorite team. I never once signed up to receive their emails – heck – I never even visited their website. Apparently they bought a list or received a bunch of emails from another entity who shared my email address with them. Guess what? Not gonna buy Redskins tickets. And never will. Draw people to you via keywords, blogs, and social media. Let them opt-in to hear from you. Sure you’ll have a smaller base to work with – but they’ll be more likely to buy if they opted-in rather than be forced to hear from you. Eventually – a word of mouth phenomenon will take place. Just like in football – you can’t force someone to just automatically like a team.
Moral of the story – Create steady, consistent drives using multiple methods to drive to the goal line in your marketing. One strategy won’t work. You must integrate various techniques, mediums, and strategies to succeed. Just like in football. And just like in football – certain plays get cut when they don’t work. Be sure to pay close attention to your data and determine the ROI for each campaign and medium you implement.
Sure – you can try a hail Mary pass from time to time – but it shouldn’t be your only option. That leaves you with a .11% chance of actually reaching your goal.
Need help creating your marketing game plan? Contact us and we’ll set up a team meeting to discuss which strategies will help you reach the goal line.
