Are you giving your marketing tactics enough time?

• You till the ground until it is ready for the seed.
• You enrich the ground with nutrient-rich manure.
• You carefully pick out just the right seed, perfectly suited for the time of year and climate in your state.
• You plant the seed, covering it with the rich soil.
• You water the seed, making sure it has everything it needs to grow.
• You check the garden the next day.  Nothing has broken ground.
• You water again, hoping to see a sprout of growth.
• You check the garden the following day.  Still nothing.
• Following the expert advice on the HGTV channel, you lightly water again.
• You check the garden again the next day.  Nothing.
• You figure you did something wrong, so you dig up the seed, 2 days before it would have broken ground.

Crazy, right?  Who the heck would go to all that work and then not give the seed the time it needed to grow?

Look in the mirror my friend.  Marketers are guilty of this every day. 

One of the core tenants of marketing is patience.  Long after we are sick and tired of an ad campaign, marketing tactic or tagline -- our audience is just beginning to notice it.

How do you know if you've given the seed time to break ground?

Related posts:
~ Create a stack of impressions
~ Close your eyes and say no

Comments

[Simon Huntley]

Thanks for posting this up. I found you through AgriMissouri. I posted a short reply to this article at my blog which focuses on marketing for small-scale farmers.

I'm thinking that patience in marketing is one way to say it, but another way to think of it is as confidence. You must have a clear plan to start and the confidence to see that to end -- and maybe the flexibility to make changes as you go along.

[Drew McLellan]

Simon,

I like that -- confidence. You are exactly right. It requires confidence in your plan even when there is no evidence yet.

That's why I like the planting analogy. As you know far better than I, there are few professions who have to operate on faith/confidence and patience more than farmers!

Drew