Are you a speed and sputter marketer?

Are you guilty of speed and sputter marketing?

I do a lot of driving.  Between work, providing my mom (3.5 hours away) with computer support and fetching my daughter every so often at college (2 hours away) — I’m on the road quite a bit.

I found myself wondering if I’d make better time if I used my cruise control on those longer drives so I decided to experiment with it.  (I know, I’m a wild man!)

I set the cruise 5 miles over the speed limit, which if you’ve driven with me, you’ll know is a little slower than I tend to drive.  So I thought it would take me longer to get to my destination.

Long story short — I definitely shortened my drive time when I used the cruise as opposed to me manually controlling the speed of my vehicle.

It makes sense — it’s easy to get distracted by other cars, something along the side of the road, the book on CD I’m listening to, a phone conversation etc.  And if nothing else, no doubt my speed is varying throughout the journey.

But with the cruise on — I’m absolutely consistent and incredibly steady.  It turns out – that’s the winning combination in terms of making good time.

Since this isn’t a car blog, you’re probably wondering why I’m sharing.  Well — it occurred to me that the same is true of marketing.

Most companies are speed and sputter marketers.  They get a great idea, have a lot of energy around it and blast it off.  But then they get busy and things get stalled.  That monthly enewsletter becomes a sort of quarterly piece.  The print ad series never actually runs.  And the customer survey is drafted or even deployed but no one got around to crunching the numbers.

Their marketing success is very hit or miss and is greatly influenced by lots of outside factors.  There’s no consistency.  And as we’ve talked about before — consistency breeds trust which is what leads to a sale.  (I know, like and trust you)

But if your marketing is on cruise control — that is to say there’s a process that keeps chugging along no matter how busy you are — your consistency will speak volumes.  You will be able to take advantage of the DRIP method of marketing that allows you to just keep a nice, steady stream of connectivity and relevant communication out there — tethering you and your audience to each other.

I can hear you now — how can we do that?  If it was easy, we’d never speed and then sputter.  I’ve got some ideas around that so stay tuned next week.

But for today — think about how your marketing/company is perceived when you stop and start all the time.  Is that who you want to be?