We all know that feeling, right after the holidays, when we are fed up of eating and lazing around. That’s it. We are going to get active, get to the gym and only eat salad and veggies! Sound familiar? We start off with a bang, go to the gym, are very very active for a little while and then it sort of just fizzles out. Or are you perhaps one of the good ones, that keeps going and exercises regularly all year round? If you are, congratulations! Now take that mindset and use it in your marketing!
Marketing is just the same. People tend to wake up occasionally and say “I really need to do this marketing thing properly – get those sales going”. This often coincides with the start of school (August or September), just before the holidays (yep!) and then in the New Year. Come spring people tend to chill and you would be forgiven to think that people don’t really want any sales during the summer. Can you see the parallels between the two – marketing and the gym? ;)
If I turn up at the gym for one month a year and go crazy, doing 6 days a week, 3 hours a day – will that get me in shape? Not really. I am more likely to get injured. I’ll get a little bit fitter but then I stop exercising and get back to where I was and have to start all over again. Marketing is the same. You can’t just go crazy with fireworks and mega campaigns every so often and then not do anything in between – that will never get your marketing in shape.
A friend of mine has another great metaphor for his. He has worked quite a lot of with farmers throughout the years. What if the farmer just went and milked the cows really really well once a month? Or just fed the animals well once over the winter? Just filled those troughs and left it at that? How would that go? – it wouldn’t, would it? The fact is that the milking has to be done every day, the feeding has to be done everyday, no matter what. Whether you find it boring or fun is irrelevent. Whether it is Monday, Sunday, New Years Eve or the summer holidays.
Your marketing is the same. You always have to keep at it. Of course I welcome those that come to me at the beginning of the new year with a resolution that this year they are really going to do this marketing thing properly. But going full force in January to then stopping in February is useless – and I can’t be bothered with that. I want to help you build a powerful marketing machine that will give you good business and that will not happen overnight. But if you are in it for the long haul, I would love to help you :)