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Good Marketing Is Like Fishing

Marketing is an exciting game -- the best sport in the world -- and in a sense, it's like fishing. Anyone can participate in either activity, but you require a high level of finesse and dedication to them do well. I've known people who were fanatical about fishing, and I've spent a little time with them; but I was never obsessed with it the way they were. These guys lived it, breathed it, and ate it -- sometimes literally.

Part of the thrill is that you never know what you're going to catch.

However, all great fishermen know that the secret to catching the big fish is threefold. One, you have to use the right bait. Two, you have to think like a fish. Three, you never reveal the hook. All marketers should pay attention to those factors too, because essentially, we're fishing in our marketplaces.

How can you attract the very best customers, people who will stay with you for years? How do you hook the ones who will bring other business your way, the ones who are going to spend the most money over the longest period of time and do you the most good? We're not just talking about money, you see. Some of our best friends are our best clients. We love spending time with them. They're positive people.

In order to attract those people, you've got to have the right bait, the combination of products, services and offers that they find the most appealing -- the things that differentiate you from everybody else in the marketplace. Start with a good, strong USP, a Unique Selling Position. What are you offering that all your competitors, both direct and indirect, are not offering in order to attract the type of person that you're looking for? What are they looking for in the first place?

To figure that out, you've got to think like they think. You have to get behind their eyeballs. Try to put yourself in their shoes as much as you possibly can. Spend a lot of time thinking about them, so you can give them what they want the most.

In my experience, what people want the most is new stuff. The most successful retailers in nearly every field are those who consistently offer something new. You always want to give the customer the feeling that when they walk into the store, it's a little different from the last time. That's another growing trend: people are always looking for things that are at least a little new, though not so new that they can't recognize the familiarity underneath. You have to accept that fact and embrace it if you want to make the big bucks.

People are subjected to so many choices nowadays that they're finicky -- and they can afford to be. If you don't take good care of them and constantly give them new options, they're not going to complain; they're just not going to come back and do business with you.

And remember: never reveal the hook. You have to sell to people without them realizing you're selling to them. The easiest way to do that is to make all of your marketing messages as altruistic as you can. Never forget, it's all about serving them. It's about doing good things for them, not you. If you serve them in the highest possible way, if you do good things for them, the good things for you will follow.

You're always fishing for the best customers. There're a great deal of strategy involved, especially in determining exactly how you're going to create the right combination of products, services, opportunities, and offers for the people you're looking to hook. You need to put together a package that's so attractive that not only will they come and do business with you once, but they'll come again. The real profits are made the second, third, fourth, thirtieth time they buy.

The goal is to get people to come back for life and spend for life, and to have those customers tell friends and family and hopefully also get those people as customers for life. There are exceptions, of course, especially if you're dealing with business-to-business products and services, but for the most part, what I've just described to you is the general overall strategy for all businesses.

Fishing is a good allegory not just for marketing but for business in general, because all business should be about marketing. Marketing is simply attracting customers and repeating business with as many of them as you can for the longest possible period. Often, local business owners don't think of themselves as marketers; they don't even bother to recall that they have to do marketing to bring customers in. Even when they do, they usually turn their marketing over to some account executive at the local newspaper, who tells the business owner what ads to run, doing all the marketing "for them."

But if they keep advertising heavily in the paper, they're getting the same bland, boring advertising everybody else is doing. That's not to say that there's no value in newspaper advertising, but you've got to know and understand marketing before you run effective ads in the newspaper -- or anywhere else.

All great fishermen know that the true secret to catching the big ones is using the right bait, thinking like a fish, and never revealing the hook. But there's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking stupid. If you're not doing the right things with your marketing, you're just standing on the shore looking stupid. You may as well be fishing without bait; youlook like you're fishing, but you're not going to catch anything. Similarly, if you're not using the right bait, if you're not thinking like the fish, if you're revealing the hook, you're probably not going to catch many fish.

One of the most important things here is to know what you're trying to catch. That's certainly important when you're fishing. What does using the right bait mean? Well, there are many different species of fish even in a stock pond here in rural Kansas, where I'm headquartered. You can catch anything from tiny bluegills to crappie to largemouth bass or catfish. Well, you're very unlikely to catch a bass or bluegill on the stink baits that catfish love. Similarly, bluegills aren't going to rise to lures that are as big as they are; those are for bass.

In the presentation of bait, whether in marketing or fishing, size matters as much as composition. If you're using tiny baits and hooks, you'll catch tiny fish. You'll never catch a whale with a minnow, right? The bait you use depends on what you're after. When you're using bigger baits, you catch bigger fish. You won't catch many, compared to what you catch with smaller baits, but the big fish will be much more valuable.

To carry all that over to marketing, you have to know your market in order to choose the right bait. You have to know exactly who you're trying to catch. What bait can we catch them with? If you use the wrong bait, you'll catch no customers... or you'll catch the wrong ones. Know who you're trying to reach. Make an offer that will appeal to those people. Be straightforward with it.

To accomplish that, you must use my second point: thinking like the fish. You've absolutely got to know who your customer is in order to find out what they respond to the best. Knowing your customer is very important, and that's one of the reasons good marketing is like effective fishing. It's all about strategy, and the way you know the right strategy is to think like your customer.

If you're going to start a business that reaches pet owners, for example, it's useful if you're a pet owner yourself. If you're selling a certain type of clothing, wear that clothing yourself. Be an active customer in the marketplace you're trying to reach. Know what kinds of things your consumers are looking for. Hobbies and other things you're interested in can be the launching pads of entire businesses, because you already know and think like the customers you're trying to reach.

If you don't know the marketplace you're trying to reach, then you have to spend a lot of time playing catch up, finding out who those people are and what they respond to, thinking like them, so you can be in a position to know what kinds of bait they respond to. What marketing methods do you use to attract the customer you're trying to reach?

And again, never reveal the hook. Bury it in the middle of the bait. In marketing, we talk about the hook being the thing you do to get people to respond. It's part of the offer. You never want to reveal the man behind the curtain. You want to make them a presentation, like the worm sitting on a hook in the water. You want them to focus on the worm, not the hook -- you want them to focus on the offer you're making, the thing you're doing to make encourage them to come into your store or respond to your email offer in the first place.

Strategy is crucial here. There are certain things you have to do if you want to do to win the game; you have to think on your feet. Those necessary strategies include picking the right bait, thinking like a fish, and not revealing the hook; you mix those in such a way that you come up with the best possible strategy to help you win. In your business, winning means making more money, serving your customers better, and getting them to respond to your offers regularly. That's how you keep score in business.

So think like a fisherman. Have some fun. Fishermen tend to take it seriously, but they're doing what they love to do.

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