The Game of Marketing

Hello everyone! This morning, as I was waking up, I thought about how fun the game of marketing can be. Sure, there’s a lot of noise. A lot of people out there pitching one marketing scheme after another - almost like a snake oil salesman. I hate it. A lot of it making marketers look like sleazy mechanics or used car salesman… you don’t know who to trust.

I started in marketing at the age of 17 when a businessman took me under his wings. He was a minister at a church, but also had an advertising/publishing business while also building a couple of nonprofit ventures trying to make a positive impact on inner city kids in Washington, DC. I’d take care of whatever small tasks he needed done and he would bring me into the meetings and I would be able to listen to his phone calls. I learned the world of marketing and business building firsthand. This was around the time when the internet just started really taking off - AOL was king and Google was just getting started. The year was 1999. This was before social media was even a thing. MySpace didn’t exist until 2003!

I eventually launched my own marketing agency with a handful of clients in 2004. Trying to market and promote in the early days of the internet, especially with a limited budget, was tough! You had to figure out how to get attention at the lowest cost possible - traditional advertising and word of mouth were the only things that could propel any business or venture. But as the internet got better, website building became easier, search engines and social media platforms began to emerge… marketing became a much more interesting game.

Even today, with the constant change and evolution within marketing… one thing remains absolutely true:

Marketing is a game of eyeballs. Getting and capturing attention at the lowest cost possible is the key to winning.

Note: Don’t copy that. Give me some credit if you ever share that (because I might write a book called “Game of Eyeballs” to help marketing students learn the principles that make marketing effective - from my experience anyway).

As I write, Tiktok is the new king of the hill in terms of social media attention. Meta (Facebook just renamed itself) is struggling to keep up and so is Youtube - having to shift their own game to compete. But, as marketers, what we have to do is the same… get and capture attention at the lowest cost possible. That is the game. The person who can figure that out as many times as possible when they attempt to market something… that person is a winner. It’s like times at bat, in baseball terms. The more you get on base, the more you win. Base is getting and capturing attention at the lowest cost possible. Some are better than others - some has to do with skill, some has to do with timing, some has to do with pure luck! But, it’s a sport.

It’s a game I love. (I don’t love it so much when a client doesn’t listen or thinks they know better when they don’t.) You have to approach the game with solid knowledge and experience, but also openness, intuition, and a willingness to adapt to ever-changing conditions. You’re competing - against other marketers (your opponent) and against market conditions (wind and weather). So, be prepared to run the length of the game and be patient… the fewer mistakes you make (has to do with cost of getting attention), the greater the chance that you’ll beat your competitors.

Until next time,
MD