Why Marketing Is A Lot Like Losing Weight

Do you usually have a new year’s resolution?

I sure do.

In fact, most people do.

Unfortunately, most people will never plan.. let alone even begin to execute.

For example, what’s probably in the top 3 resolutions that people have?

Right – LOSE weight. Go to gym early in the morning. Look great… etc etc.

As a marketing experiment, go check out what the gyms look like on Jan 2nd, 3rd, and 3th… usually this is what it looks like:

Yeap.

Mostly empty machines, just like how they look throughout the year.

Even though gym memberships surge 30% in January (source: Quora and WJHG), most will eventually fall from their “resolution” plans

A U.S. Government survey shows a little less than half of all Americans make some kind of new year’s resolution, but most don’t keep them.

75% will last a week.

64% will keep them for a month.

Only 46% will ever make it to the six month mark.

Of course, the gym coach on Quora doesn’t have much better stats either:

12% of new gym memberships come in January come by percentage, but it actually represents about a 33-50% increase in volume. The second week of January is almost always the busiest of the year.

80% of the New Years Resolutions crowd drops off by the second week of February. Meaning only 20% remain, and the rate of sign-ups tapers off by February (almost all of that initial spike, save for maybe 1-2% of total volume for the year.)

Gyms typically sell memberships with the expectation that a mere 18% of people will actually use them. Meaning there is a 1/5 chance you’ll use yours consistently for longer than a month.

Funny thing though… resolution comes from the word “resolute” – i.e. determined and focused.

Now, why do I mention this and how is this related to marketing?

As with achieving anything hard in life, you must have a plan and stick to it.

The problem is, most people don’t have a plan that’s … well.. MEASURABLE.

Let’s look at some of these “plans”:

• Lose more weight


• Go to gym more


• Eat less

Now, what exactly is “more weight”? 10 lbs? 20lbs? 100lbs?

What exactly is “go to gym more”? 1 day more a week? 30 minutes more a day?

What exactly is “eat less”? Skip a meal? Don’t eat candy? Smaller portions?

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.

How exactly do you measure “more” or “less”?

That’s right.. you CAN’T.

Now, with marketers… they do the same thing.

• write more blog posts


• launch more tests


• do more networking


• participate in social networks

Blah blah…

The only “plan” this plan has is the plan to fail.

If you want to lose weight or be great at marketing, you need a plan.

And your plan needs to have THESE components

No Specificity = No Attainability

Problem with generic goals is that our brain is wired to gain pleasure and avoid pain.

In another words, with every outcome of an action, our brain calculates (i.e. scientifically/mathematically provable outcome) and if it cannot come to that exact calculation, our brain will telling us “is this even worth doing?”

In fact, W. Edwards Deming, the man who helped to revolutionize the manufacturing industry in Japan and help Japan become the world leader in automotive industry, made lifetime achievements with this principal:

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

You cannot manage your weight if you cannot measure what you’re doing. You cannot manage your marketing if you cannot measure your results.

Instead of saying “My new year resolution is to lose weight”… why not say “My plan is to go running 5 miles a day every day”.

Instead of saying, “My marketing new year resolution is to write more blog”… why not say “My plan is to write 3 posts a week until I rich 500 posts”… (Well,…. you should probably polish up your story telling skills first though.)

If you cannot measure it, your brain cannot tell you if you should be kicking it up a notch.

Be as specific as possible: when, where, who, what, and how.

Habit Wins, Most of the Time

If you’re creating a new resolution, there’s an implicit undertone that you’re trying to change something about you.

But here’s the thing: habit is by far the most potent source of all human actions.

You’ve heard the phrase: that humans are creatures of habit.

So can this be broken?

Yes, but you need some kind of external stimulus

According to a research done by neurobiologists at Stanford:

Well, one lesson is that though habits may seem hard to break, they may actually be under continual management by cortex…. that it is indeed possible to completely stop a habit dead in its tracks.Just as the rats’ habitual maze running was broken by a brief pulse of light …, I decided to try to think of more natural ways to suddenly interrupt my automatic, habitual motor patterns by using common environmental stimuli to quiet down my own IL cortex

Do you know why gyms always try to make you come with your friend?

Sure, they want to sell more gym memberships… but really, they want you to come with your friend because your friend is THE external stimulus you need. The sense of community, the sense of accountability, the sense of social activity.

Whether or not you’re a one man shop or a team of marketers in a large company, ultimately the work gets done by you. Just like going to a gym … you can go with friends, but ultimately you have to run on the treadmill and you have to lift the weights.

But most people lack this sort of support system (i.e. external stimulus) that can break your habit of momentum (or lack there of).

So find your support network.

Let Go

When I was meditating in Thailand, there were TWO things I learned from the Buddhist monks, which seemed to contradict each other:

• be in the present moment / be attached


• never be emotionally attached / be detached

Now, how can you be attached AND be detached at the same time?

Simply put: you HAVE to be attached to the thing that you are doing at the moment… but be detached from the outcome or the external realities that you cannot control.

If you have a weight loss goal, can you guarantee that if you work out 5x a week for 2 hours a day, that you are guaranteed to lose 100 lbs. in 3 months?

Probably not.

If you have a marketing goal, can you guarantee that if you blog 2x a day for a year with content rich keywords, that you will kick ass in SEO Google will place your website as #1 for bunch of highly competitive keywords?

Probably not. (Which is why I don’t do SEO…)

The Buddhists say that you should love what you do…and never let the outcome steal your joy or happiness, because we can’t control everything.

The only thing we can control is the thing between our ears… the mind that tells us whether we should feel any kind of emotion.

So learn to let go.

Key Points

Want to achieve your marketing goals for this year?

1. Make SPECIFIC plans – when, where, how, how, and what.


2. Have support system / external stimulus to break your old habits and form new ones


3. Let go. Enjoy the process and don’t be bummed if it doesn’t get you exactly what you wanted.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/marketing/marketing-lot-like-losing-weight-0730360?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=marketing-lot-like-losing-weight