5 Reasons Marketing is Like Football

And the crowd goes wild…for your marketing strategy.

With so many moving pieces in marketing, it’s easy to lose sight of the overall picture. There’s the strategy, design, and content, but there’s also digital, positioning, external communications, and a slew of other details to consider.

Starting to sound a lot like a team sport? We thought so too. Football requires a lot of strategies, team effort, and good luck to see positive results. If you’re a football fanatic like us, keep reading to find out exactly what we’re talking about!

1. You Need a Playbook

It’s no surprise that much like football, you need a marketing strategy to have business success. Your company cannot grow and increase lead generation, market share, revenue growth, and brand awareness without a marketing playbook. With the right strategy, you are able to outmaneuver the competition.

We believe that the foundation of a strong, healthy, and profitable marketing strategy is data, research, and structure. That’s why we create MSAPs, or Marketing Strategy Action Plans (MSAPs), for businesses all across the country. From conducting competitor research to building buyer personas to developing best practices and recommendations for your business, your MSAP will function as your playbook to marketing victory.

2. Develop a Loyal Fan Base

From NCAA to NFL, there seems to be an endless amount of teams to cheer for. The same is true for your business’s customer fan base. Finding your targeted personas, as discovered in your MSAP, online is the first step in creating your loyal fan base.

Once you have pinpointed who you plan to market to, you can then implement your strategy and nourish those customer relationships. Although growing your audience and online fan base is important, when it comes to content marketing, your ability to connect with your existing audience is frequently far more essential.

The Dallas Cowboys are affectionately known as “America’s Team.” They have more Facebook fans than any other team, at 8.75 million, and they were just named the “team with the best fans” in a Forbes analysis. With that being said, there are several NFL fans that could care less about Dak Prescott and his team, mainly any Philadelphia Eagles fans.

Accepting that you are not going to please everyone, will help you find your target audience sooner. In the end, why pitch your product to someone who’s not going to buy and/or support it?!

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3. Screaming at the Ref is Going to Do Nothing

Football, as entertaining as it is, can also be extremely irritating. Close calls, terrible coaching decisions, and questionable ref calls have millions of Americans yelling at the television every week. Not to mention, rules are always changing.

Marketing digitally is one and the same. As rewarding as online marketing can be, it takes a lot of strategies, hard work, and dedication to see results. And just like NFL and collegiate football rules being changed annually, social media algorithms are altered invariably.

According to Moz, “Each year, Google changes its search algorithm around 500-600 times.” This type of stuff happens all the time in content marketing. Consider Facebook and all of the changes that have an impact on your ability to reach followers with organic posts, email spam filters that may send your newsletter straight to the spam folder, and software changes that have an impact on the design and functionality of programs you’ve grown accustomed to. In these cases, screaming at the screen won’t help either. Understanding that things are going to change, and that they are out of your control, will help you be able to pivot in the right direction and in a timely manner when your marketing strategy needs to.

4. It’s Okay to Celebrate with a Touchdown Dance!

Whether it’s writing a blog post you’re proud of, seeing your Facebook Ads Manager numbers rise, or receiving a great review on your Google Business account, make sure to thank yourself for your efforts and use the experience to help you achieve even better outcomes in the future.

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5. Remember, it’s a Team Sport

Whether you outsource your marketing efforts to a digital agency, like Envision Creative 😃, or keep it in-house, realizing that everyone involved is on the same team, will create wins much faster and more often. Much like a well-run football organization, our team of talented designers, developers, digital marketers, and copywriters have a shared investment in the success of our clients.

Whether it’s a local business or a global company, the quality of our work is what puts dinner on individual tables—or doesn’t. We succeed because we have team members who have strong individual skills but who come together to play their specific roles that help us execute projects and ‘win’ games. Remembering that the success of your business is dependent on every team member’s efforts, will create more than a winning season.

Now that you’re ready to take the field, be sure to check out our other free guides and resources so that you can score a business touchdown. We have a 2021 Social Media Guide that offers tips and tricks to up-level your social media game, and a guide on How To Create Accurate Buyer Personas. Looking for a coach to help create strategies and execute them to get you in front of your ideal target audience as quickly and efficiently as possible? Contact us today!