New Marketing Programs – What’s Your 60′ Time?

Okay, let me be the first to say that I know nothing about cars.  I’m the guy that if the car breaks down, I go and open up the hood and I check the battery terminals.  All fine.  I look at any plastic reservoirs that have liquid in them. All filled.  I pull out the oil dipstick and look at it.  No idea.   Then, I gaze into what might as well be a nuclear reactor, and get that squinty look that only guys looking at a car engine can have (ladies you know what I’m talking about) and say with confidence – “yeah, we need to take it in”.

But okay, having said that, I’m oddly fascinated with drag racing.   I’ve been to a few in my day – and you can literally feel the power of those cars in your chest.  It’s actually quite something.

So, there’s a concept in drag racing called the 60’ Time.  Basically, the 60’ Time is how long it takes you to go the first 60 feet in a ¼ Mile race.    Apparently, this is the “make or break” of a drag race.   If you “burn out” your tires too much, or if you don’t get off the gate fast enough, – you’ll have a slow 60’ time.

And, here’s the magic: the general rule of thumb is that for every tenth of a second you can shave off of the first 60 feet – you’ll get a .15 to .20 second benefit at the end of the race.     Remember a 1/4 mile race is 1,320 feet and less than 7 seconds.   And, the first 60 feet is usually somewhere between 1.8 to 2.0 seconds of the race….    So, about 25% of the time of a race is spent covering the first 4% of the track.   No wonder that this important statistic can make or break your race.

What’s Your 60’ Time When It Comes To New Digital Marketing

As I start to work with more and more organizations – especially those that are launching new social media and online marketing programs – I find there to be a really similar phenomenon.

So, whether it’s Brand Marketing, Content Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media – whatever – in my experience, there are generally two phases to new digital marketing programs.  There is – the first moment (it might be one hour, one week or six months) where moving the needle is relatively easy and there’s lots of excitement and results to show for it.

And then, there’s the second phase which is incremental movement – and so begins the slow process of learning, iterating, failing, succeeding and ultimately improving over time.

And, what I’ve found is that there are two keys to both of these phases.

1. Make sure you really optimize your 60’ Time – or that first phase so that you are really set for the second phase.and…
2. Make sure to set the expectation with your stakeholders (clients, management team, board etc…) that this second phase is coming.

A quick look at each:

Launch Well To Win

As one drag racer said to me – “how you launch your car (basically less than half a second of real time) is the entire world of drag racing.  You have to know your car inside and out.  How does it take off from the line?  Can you launch it in the heart of the ‘power band’?  Do you have a high stall torque converter?  All of those things determine whether you’ll have a great 60’ time.”

Okay, so most of that might as well be written in Klingon to me – but the lesson is crystal clear.  When you’re launching a new marketing program in your organization – taking the all important time to make sure you know all the details about your campaign, the content, the goals, the creative, your measurement capabilties.   It’s understanding your process and content strategy for content marketing.  It’s understanding your goals and priorities for both landing pages and keywords for Search Engine Marketing.  It’s understanding the “who is listening” for social media programs.   Taking care to launch your program well, will save you time, and exponentially increase your chances for success in the second phase.

Manage The Race For The Long Road

So, once you launch and you get your baseline of results – don’t make the mistake of assuming that the initial growth or improvement will always be there.   It’s definitely a race you need to manage on two sides.

The first is learning to immediately start making changes.  Iterate.  Experiment.  Change.  If you’ve launched well, your process allows for these experiments and empowers you to try weird “out of the box” things – without upsetting the continuing success.

But more importantly – set those expectations with your stakeholders.  Make sure that they understand that this is a process – and that there will be times of incremental growth, as well as even declines as you try new things.    I’ve outlined before what C level executives really want to know about your marketing before – but just remember a couple of things…

Know what’s important – understand from your management team the important KPI’s and goals and make sure that those are what you manage to

Budget for success and failure – make sure you have permission to fail

The *only* thing that analytics are good for are insight to take an action.

So, among racing aficionados – especially those that don’t like drag racing, there’s a saying that says “drag racing is for fast cars, and [track] racing is for fast drivers”.  In other words – what wins – the marketing or the marketer?

I think in today’s socially connected marketing world – you’ve got to have both.   You’ve got to bring the unique talents that only you can bring to the race – as well as a well prepared, and extraordinarily fast car.

Start your engines…

PS> The awesome image I used for this comes from the Google archive of Life Magazine Photographs and is from the Great Photographer Grey Villet… If you’re interested in racing photos there’s a whole bunch there.