A friend once told me the best thing about being a writer is that it opens you up to a world where you can become whatever you want. I think most writers and avid readers would agree, to an almost delusional extent.
Lately, I’ve become a veritable expert on the subject of mountaineering. Not actually doing it of course, but ingesting it so much that I could fool a true professional, until I biffed my crampon attachment.
Over the course of becoming a mountaineer, I’ve noticed there are a lot of parallels between mountaineering and marketing. The risks are admittedly a bit greater in mountaineering since you could, you know, die, and you probably won’t die from launching a bad marketing campaign (if so you are doing some very risky marketing and I’d be interested to meet you). But often, both need to be handled delicately and personally, and with big risk comes big reward…or big failure.
Take it from someone who knows, here are five marketing lessons that can be taken from mountaineering.
1. Timing is everything.
In both marketing and mountaineering, timing can work to your benefit or your detriment. The now age-old example of Oreo and their real-time marketing play is the best example we’ve seen of perfect timing, and will make the marketing history books for it. The worst examples are likely the tweets promoting product on 9-11–if social media managers tweeted out pictures displaying AT&T phones on any other day, the message would have a very different intent and reception.
The vast majority of professional mountaineers can summit even the highest mountains given the right time and circumstance. But when you try to summit Mt. Everest at 4:00 PM just before sundown, you are going to run into some problems.
2. The simplest route is often the easiest. But the road less traveled will get you the glory.
How often do you see marketing messages that look exactly the same? This is especially true in the B2B space, where the same buzzwords are repeated to the point of exhaustion. These buzzwords may adequately get your point across, but they probably won’t win you any accolades.
(Spoiler alert: We’re launching our new People Pattern website in early 2015, and we’re going to do our best to remain buzzword free!)
Modern day mountaineering is most typically defined as mountaineers following the same routes that mountaineers from the golden age already established. But those climbers that established the routes are the names we mountaineers recognize: Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, Joe Simpson (trust me, you want to read that story).
3. Know your audience.
In the case of mountaineering, the audience is the mountain. Be respectful, listen to its signals and language, and only approach it when it’s ready. In marketing, every audience is composed of different personas and clusters of like-minded people, with unique interests, habits and voice. Be smart, understand your audience, act in the right way at the right time.
4. Learn from your mistakes.
I think it’s safe to say that few marketers get it right the first time. This applies to messaging, branding, voice, and really any aspect of marketing. Luckily, all of these initial choices can be evolutionary based on insights extracted from data, word of mouth and audience intelligence.
I’m sure many a mountaineer has leaned the hard way to pack extra gloves, wear UV protected sunglasses, and be very careful when leaving a fixed rope.
…Marketers usually have a better shot at that second chance.
5. Don’t get summit fever.
An old boss who is a very well-respected marketer taught me to abide by the 80/20 rule, and I use it always. Operating under the assumption that nothing is ever perfect, the moment you start waiting for perfection is the moment the market will surely pass you.
That said, I also believe in taking your time when you have the luxury, reassessing situations, and using data to inform your strategy.
Be smart about reaching that summit. The mountain will be there tomorrow.
Recent Comments