Social Media: A Gym Metaphor
In today’s post, I thought I’d describe how Social Media should play out in a healthy marketing program.
At New Harbor, we believe in consistent and systematic approaches to sales and marketing. From trade shows to cold calls, there is a system in place. It may not be sexy to be slow and steady but we believe that the consistency is the key. In fact, our belief in systematic approaches lead us to change our entire product offering in order to foster this philosophy in our clients, but more on that some other time.
Let me explain this philosophy a little.
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time working out in the gym. In High School, I cut my weight by 65 pounds and spent way too many hours with a personal trainer in order to get ready for Lacrosse season. In college, the training never stopped as I was trying very hard to keep my weight off and also work my up the ranks of our team. Who knew it, but I actually miss all the training I did when playing Lacrosse.
Now, spending time in the gym is a daily chore for me but one I take on with intense determination. It is probably the fact that working out is always present in my mind that has lead me to this analogy. Stay with me, this will mean something I swear.
Here are two lessons the gym taught me that can change how you look at your marketing program.
GYM LESSON ONE: DO EVERYTHING WITH CONSISTENCY
Of everything I learned in all those years of training, the one key thing I learned was that consistency was the secret weapon. It doesn’t matter how fast you run on the treadmill. What matters is how often you do it.
In fact, I walked into my gym a couple weeks ago and the owner said to me “Adam you’ve been very consistent lately.” Notice that she didn’t say, “you look like you’ve lost 20 pounds” which I had done. What was more impressive to her was that I was going 5 days a week for two months and she could pretty much set a calendar to it. Consistency is key.
So what does that have to do with Marketing? Well, let’s think about it.
Let’s say you’re going to try and lose some weight. You drag your butt out of bed and drive to the gym. Once you get there, you hop on the treadmill and sprint for as long as you can until you can’t breath, about 5 minutes. Satisfied, you call it a day and then go home until next week.
Sure you may, and I’m being generous here, see a small result but it won’t get you where you want to go and it might even lead to injury.
This rule plays out in every aspect of our lives from relationships to business and it is never more true than in Marketing. Look at Super Bowl ads. Sure they get your attention but does it make you want to purchase the product right away? Rarely. Those commercials must be consistent. They must play regularly (often for months after the Super Bowl) until you’re tired of them.
I love the Geico ads on television but I never remembered that a “15 minute call could save me 15% or more on car insurance” until that limey gecko told it to me for the 80th time in a year. Make sense?
GYM LESSON TWO: ONE THING DOESN’T DO EVERY THING
When I was a kid I always worked out at the gym. I think from junior high until college, the gym and working out was a big part of my life. Looking at pictures of me at that time you wouldn’t know it. Even if I was consistent and faithfully working out I could never seem to lose weight. It wasn’t until I was a senior in high school that I lost those 65 pounds. Why was that time so different? Because it was the first time in my life that I paid attention to my diet in addition to my consistent workout regimen. Working out was not enough.
So let’s say that you’re no longer just running for 5 minutes a week. You’re jogging on the treadmill for a half hour a day, four days a week. However, every day on your way home, you stop by some fast food restaurant and pickup a triple cheeseburger with extra curly fries. Do you think you’re going to lose as much weight as you could? Nope!
Now, let’s say you get your diet in check and you’re now jogging regularly. You are definitely going to start to lose weight. However, you may be losing valuable muscle and not just fat. You should really incorporate some resistance training into your workout as well.
Are you getting my point? It’s not enough to be perfect in one area. You must incorporate multiple disciplines if you want to be effective.
Okay Adam, now I’m exhausted so what does this mean for my marketing?
Simple. You’re kidding yourself if you think Twitter is the only thing you need to do in order to bring in new business. Even more important is the system behind your Twitter approach. What will you do to move a casual follower into action and make a call or sign up for a sample? Even more, what will you do when they call or sign up? What about the people in your market who don’t care about Twitter? There are still people like that. What are you going to do in order to reach them? Do they still read newspapers or magazines? What about trade shows?
Social Media is on the lips of every person in the news media but Social Media is not the only thing you should be doing. Find out what they’re doing and go meet them where they’re at. Should you be online? Of course, but don’t think for a second that you should only be online.
Next, once you decide on all of the different practices you need to incorporate DO THEM WITH CONSISTENCY! Don’t post on Twitter once a week. Blog more than twice a month. And make sure follow up calls are happening daily.
Bottom line, there are no new marketing tricks to get results. Even if the technology changes the methodology stays the same. Find every little thing that needs to be done and then build a system that will do every one of those things with consistency.
I can’t say this enough.
VARIETY + CONSISTENCY = RESULTS
I hope you found this very long post to be, at least, a little bit helpful. Thanks for reading.
