TLDR
• Go read “Great by Choice”, it has some amazing ideas not outlined here. “Fire Bullets, then Cannonballs” is a rather great retelling of the idea of the power of prototyping and test markets.
• Especially if you’re a small business, never ignore the power of sustained growth. If you do, you’re really missing out.
• Promotions are great for highlighting something in the news, getting a rapid influx of people or generating buzz.
• Sustained growth’s strength is in its affordability and long-term benefits. Suffers from diminishing returns.
• You can’t afford to compare apples to oranges. Promotions and sustained growth serve different purposes and have their own strengths.
Jim Collin’s latest book, “Great by Choice” is a well-crafted reimagining of some of the fundamentals of good business practices. Collins introduces us to the notion of a “20 mile march” – leading with the strategy of sustained growth over the whims of normal market volatility. That perhaps the turtle does beat the hare in the long term.
But what if this notion should be plied to our trade as well? And how? Whenever I build a new framework for business, be it finance, strategy or social, I create a fictitious mom and pop cupcake company, “Dainty Cakes.” Dainty has just decided to build their first marketing campaign and have gone to two separate marketing companies for support. The only criteria Dainty gives is that they would like it to be on Facebook.
Company A
A recommends a cupcake-palooza event. Company A describes it as a multi-platform social event used to drive cupcake enthusiasts into Dainty’s Facebook page where they will then receive regular brand messaging. The idea is slightly risky due to the nature of the volatile nature of cupcake enthusiast’s acceptance of branding (“advertising just makes cupcakes oh-so-passe”), but company A assures Dainty that most of the time these types of contests yield positive results.
Company B
B recommends an organic growth strategy. Dainty has some pretty popular web assets already that enthusiasts love. Namely an online cupcake builder and a website which publishes baking tips and insider information via a very popular blog. B would rather increase organic traffic by converting the “Read More” part of the blog to go to a Facebook note, build in some open graph integration using Facebook’s new [noun] [verb] system and lastly build a brand voice Dainty can then take to popular forums or Facebook to build brand engagement with enthusiasts.
Which would you go with? Let’s assume the cost of each campaign is the same. Collins notes that one of the successful traits of a “10X” (high growth) company is that they would pick option B – to build a strategy around sustained growth over one big-sexy risk.
The Hidden Nature of Sustained Growth
Good news everyone! Dainty receives a new investor. In the heat of jubilation the CMO approves both ideas from A and B! Victory all around. Both companies are hired. At the end of the month, the numbers come in.
Campaign A is declared victorious and future business goes to them. Wait…what? Companies, especially younger ones like Dainty, tend to think in terms of campaigns. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s how the marketing industry works, but it leaves a fundamental flaw to be reconciled.
Although based on a broader spectrum, Collin’s idea that sustained growth is more powerful than volatile growth is a powerful one that can apply to the social sphere. Sure, company A would keep launching new (and likely) successful campaigns, but even then they need to spend more money just to keep up with company B’s strategy.
A Hare and a Tortoise
Here is where Collins and I diverge a bit.
The difference between successful modern marketers and unsuccessful ones seems to be multidimensional versus one-dimensional thinking.
Those who focus solely on promotions suffer from a lack of overall growth. When the marketing of a channel stops, so too does its ability to grow. They also put themselves in the hands of those campaigns which can run a spectrum of the most amazing thing in the world to a very epic waste of money.
On the other hand, those who focus solely on sustained growth soon suffer from the notion of diminishing returns. Eventually you run out of optimizations you can make or usability paths. Every additional dollar you pump into optimization is worth slightly less than the one before it. Bursty volatile campaigns also play off of, boost and synergize with other new endeavors that may need more focus in the press in a short period of time.
Jim Bruno breaks systems, particularly in marketing, for a living. He’s also the biggest geek in the world.
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