Five Reasons Marketing A Small Business Is Like Playing Football
Five Reasons Marketing A Small Business Is Like Playing Football
Marketing a small business is one of the most difficult activities any entrepreneur will face. Its full of challenges and obstacles that demand preparation dedication and determination to win the game. Its just like playing football success will ultimately be determined by your commitment to win and your desire to compete.
Running a business is a lot like playing an intense game of football. Essentially both are organized chaos with competitors who aim to prevent you from gain ground and scoring points. In business you win the game by scoring mores sales than your competitors rather making touchdowns or field goals. The one who become the champion of your industry is the company with the best marketing which attracts the most clients or customers.
There are five key similarities between marketing and football that every business must implement if they want to become champions:
1. Preparation and Planning
Any successful football coach will tell you that preparation and planning is the key to winning. Its not the will to win but the willingness to prepare to win that is important. Countless hours go into scouting opponents developing plays and practicing for specific situations before the game is ever played.
As a business owner you must also invest the time to research and planning. The only way for you to create competitive advantage is to understand your market know your competitors and create a plan that will score consistent sales. This begins with committing to working on your marketing every day. By dedicating an hour each day to marketing your business youll create momentum that your competitors cant stop.
2. Aggressiveness
Its simple you cant compete if you dont play. Marketing your business demands that you get in the game and take on your toughest competitors. To achieve victory you must be aggressive and execute marketing plays which positions your company as the best choice lowest risk option to fill a need or solve their problem.
Being aggressive is a positive goforit attitude. Its not about being out of control and acting recklessly with your marketing dollars. Instead its about being focused and taking action before your competitors have a chance to beat you.
I tell my football players Be the hammer not the nail. This means you deliver the hit and not take it. During a football game the more aggressive team wins just like in business.
3. Positioning
Football is a game of exploiting gaps in the defense to advance the ball down the field and across the goal line to score. Marketing your business is the same you must find a gap in the market that is not being filled with a product or service that people are looking for. When you have an offer which none of your competitors can match you position company as the obvious choice.
Youll score more sales and become a champion quicker by finding a gap in the market that is currently unfilled and not crowded with competitors. Creating plays which have an easy path to a score is the goal of every football coach. Your goal as an entrepreneur is to score a sale every time you execute a marketing play. Understanding the value and strategy of positioning is the best way to achieve it.
4. Play Calling
In football calling the right offensive play in the right situation against the right defense becomes the highlight which is shown on SportsCenter over and over again. When marketing your business the offer that attracts a huge response and generates massive sales is very similar in stature.
A marketing play is any advertisement promotion or communication you execute to get a prospect to take action. Calling the right marketing play that meshes with your audience is essential to your success. However this takes time testing and persistence. Most marketers give up after their first marketing play fails. Entrepreneurs become champions in their industry because they persistently try new marketing plays until they find the ones that perform and score consistently.
Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi said “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” Marketing champions are the ones who never stop chasing perfection no matter how big the challenge.
5. Consistent Scoring
An old football coach once told me Its hard to win if you dont score!
In business in scoring a sale is not only important but the required to survive. Without people buying what you offer you will soon be out of business. All of your business activities should be in support of creating sales. Accounting production engineering distribution and any other area of your business must help to create the conditions to make more sales.
Unfortunately most business cut marketing when business slows down. This is a big mistake! No other activity in your business can increase your sales except for marketing. This requires commitment to the marketing process and understanding how to play the game. Like football reaching a sale is usually a sequence of steps that gets you closer to the goal line and the score not a one shot Hail Mary pass. By focusing all aspects of your business as part of marketing you will no doubt become the champion in your industry.
These five keys are a few of the essential building blocks of creating winning marketing. However the biggest point of leverage any business owner can have their marketing attitude. Are you marketing offensively or defensively? Are you the aggressor or accepting what the competition dictates? How you approach your marketing is the single biggest determining factor of your success.
About the writer: To find out how to become the marketing champion in your industry check out marketing coach Ron Abbotts Touchdown Marketing System website. Request your free marketing eBook that gives you ten musthave marketing plays that will increase your business. Click here for more.
Related posts:
