Marketing is a bit like pigeon shooting. Okay, bear with me on this one – it’s not just an excuse I use when I fancy a day in the hide rather than a day in the office. Although that’s something I often do fancy, sadly, it rarely comes to pass. But I digress.
You see, anyone can sit in a hide all day and take pot shots at passing pigeons, and, often out of range, the pesky crop munchers fail even to notice you save for some irritating background noise of your gun. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, one might swoop down in range of your hide and not see you, giving you an easy shot. You might bag it and good luck to you, but that isn’t going to put much food on the table. You’re not going to get rich that way.
What you need is something to pull the pigeons in, and this is where a communications strategy comes into play.
For the humble pigeon shooter this means decoys. Throw a few decoys out in shooting distance of your hide and suddenly passing pigeons will begin to notice and look in your direction. Seeing something of interest, one or two might even come down to investigate, so as long as you don’t get over excited and spring up from your hide too early, sending them wheeling off in the opposite direction, you’ve got the beginnings of a decent day’s sport.
But even this isn’t enough to pull in the really big bags. Like successful marketing, successful pigeon shooting is a combination of a lot of factors – research, intuition, judgement, experimentation, authenticity, learning from more experienced people, practice, persistence, finding creative solutions, and – ultimately – time spent in the field.
So much in your environment effects the success of your efforts – flight lines, wind direction, weather, time of day, time of year, crop type and growth, position of your decoys, hide position, and so much more, that the pigeon shooter, like the marketeer, must weigh up all of these and be adaptable to get the results he or she is looking for.
OK, there comes a point where the analogy breaks down. After all, we don’t want to do to our customers what we’re trying to do to the pigeons. As well as attracting new customers, we want the same ones to return time and again. If the same pigeons return time and again then they are stupid and you need shooting lessons! But you take my point.
So if you feel your marketing could be working harder to pull potential customers into range then do please get in touch. Or if you just fancy a day’s pigeon shooting get in touch too, after all, with such similarities between the two disciplines, time in the hide could have your bottom line soaring!