What Does Your CEO Need To Know?
Digital Marketing Is Baseball – Not Football
(Part 4)

 Over the last three postings, we've covered what your CEO needs to know about your digital marketing. And, at this point, your CEO now knows that you're in control. And that you own a marketing process – that is not focused on selling your product – but focused on your buyer. As a result of that, you're now content-driven to match buyer behavior and you've got a process around management of your measurement. Put simply, you're built to improve your process, not prove anything.

So, here's number three. I purposely don't say "last" lest it feel like a matching set of luggage, or that there aren't others. But as the NFL Wildcard Weekend comes to an end, I thought I'd conclude this series of blog postings with this thought. 

Okay, if your CEO isn't a sports fan, then this might not carry alot of water – but here's the idea: 

Marketing Is Baseball, Not Football

The average Major League Baseball game is 2 hours and 50 minutes long. The average NFL Football game is 3 hours and 7 minutes long. So, give or take 17 minutes – or about 10% – they are roughly equal in length. However, consider that the action in a football game is about 15-18 minutes of that time – and that the game is timed. Even in the case of a tie, there is only one more 15 minute period in which to come to a winning conclusion. In a baseball game, the ball is almost always in play, and theoretically the game could last days – as there is no "set" time that the game must conclude. 

That's 15-18 minutes of all out sprinting, leaping, bone crushing athleticism vs. a long, strategic, mindful process interrupted by the occasional sprint – that has no artificial end. 

Consider also that a Baseball season is 162 games vs. the 16 for the NFL. And, that during the playoffs, baseball teams must win multiple games against the same opponent, vs. the NFL which is whoever wins on that particular day advances. 

Now, I'm not arguing which sport is better – and in fact, I'm mostly a football fan. But, traditional marketing, for the longest time, has been treated by most businesses like football. Every game can be won or lost – and if lost can spell doom for the entire season. The risk-reward for every game is incredibly high as the difference of one win can mean the difference of going to the playoffs or being relegated to the bottom of the pool until next season. As a player, one wrong fall, one mistake in a game can mean that your finished with a season-ending injury. It's all trying to get to the Super Bowl – one game that will determine it all. 

We've got to break out of this.

For marketing, it's a long season. There are, and should be, many chances to fail – as long as we fail quickly, learn and adapt to the new surroundings. Each tactic that we try – if we look at it as a game – is just one of hundreds of others that we will play. When we win – we'll feed that strategy – we'll work it again. And, when we lose – we'll quickly learn and adapt – maybe even within a series against the same team.

What does your CEO need to Know?

The same thing that your CFO needs to know – it is a fool's errand to treat today's marketing as a 16 game season. And, it's impractical to think that you're going to maintain perfect ROI. Superstar Quarterbacks maintain 60%+ pass completion percentages. Superstar Baseball players bat at .330 or above. That means if you're considered to be a superstar quarterback you complete 6 out of 10 passes. But as a superstar baseball player – you hit about three of every ten pitches. Success, by nature is more distributed among the team – and must be maintained over a longer period of time. 

You've got to look at the marketing investment as a long-term strategy. You must be able to experiment with new tactics. You must have budget to fail – and you must have a longer term view of what benefits the marketing investment will pay off. 

Marketing As A Long-Term Business Investment

Because, of generally accepted accounting rules, your company will most likely require you to treat marketing as short-term expenses. It's an interesting paradox though when you think about what huge benefits can be derived long-term from marketing vs. some of the other things we treat as long term. For example, when we look at "long-term" investments such as R&D on product development and other types of research and then balance the true return on investment vs. marketing – I think many times our marketing investments get the short end of the stick. I think it's clear that at some point we will need to re-examine marketing investments from an accounting point of view. 

But that's simply a fight for another day – because I'm not going to advocate going in and fighting with your CFO about that. We've got leads to generate. 

Rather, what your CEO needs to know now is that we need to treat our marketing as a long season. We will try things that fail. We need to be able to look at the lifetime value of our customers and some of the marketing efforts that we use that help to retain these long term, high value customers. 

Our CEO also needs to know that there are intangible benefits that come from increasing our marketing budgets, and from some of the tactics we do. Some of these are hard to point a finger at – but do contribute substantially to that one metric that we all care so much about…. Revenue Growth. 

There's a quote attributed to Paul Richards, a manager for the Baltimore Orioles in the 1950's that sums it up very well. He said of Baseball (and I think you can switch it with today's marketing) that it's "made up of very few big and dramatic moments, but rather it's a beautifully put together patten of countless little subtleties that finally add up to the big moment, and you have to be well-versed in the game to truly appreciate them."

Batter up…..