For some, the fall season means changing leaves, a cool kiss of autumn air and a warm #PSL by your side. However, for others (like me), it signifies the time to agonize over fierce rivalries, colorful face paint and tasty tailgating. There is nothing quite like football, is there?
Regardless of whether or not you personally care for football, there is no denying the war-like tactics at play here. These men, many of which could probably pull a family-sized sedan (with the family along for the ride, no less), push their bodies to incredible extremes, but all of their literal blood, sweat and tears would be for naught if there was not a tactician on the sidelines holding the playbook.
As each team’s personal Patton, a coach can be a father figure, a boss, a commander and a friend, but above all else, a coach must be a leader. Strategic thinking, problem solving and a can’t-quit attitude are common among many championship-winning coaches — which left me thinking. What can some of the winningest, most respected football coaches of all time teach us about marketing?
Placing my buffalo-sauce-glazed chicken wing safely back in the basket and turning down the volume on this week’s game, I decided to share a few choice quotes that can score your brand a marketing touchdown.
Marketing Tips Gleaned From The Gridiron
Though it may be a hard fact to swallow for us perfectionists, every marketing effort can always be better. What you should take away from Coach Lombardi’s quote is to always strive for perfection, yet accept that not everything in your marketing plan will go as planned. Instead of getting discouraged, use a steady stream of results and data to uncover ways you can to improve your plan.
The bottom line is, though standout talent can be a significant asset, teamwork trumps a single genius nearly every time. Marketing and brand management are team sports. Social media interfaces with blogs, which interface with overall branding, which interfaces with your website. In an agency, our work is only as good as our willingness to collaborate under the singular goal of our clients’ success.
With this quote, Coach Noll provides us quite a lot to incorporate into our marketing efforts. Firstly, consistency is key — keep up on both blog post and social media schedules, posting on a regular basis. Maintaining brand standards is also a fundamental part of quality branding.
Beyond consistency, attention to detail cannot be encouraged enough. From the spelling and grammar of an eblast to tagging the correct Facebook page in a promotional post, taking the extra five minutes to double and triple check marketing work is a smart and worthwhile habit.
Coach Allen and Coach Lombardi both point toward the same lesson here: always keep your eye on the prize. Goal setting is vital to measuring success in marketing efforts. In marketing (and in life), if you don’t know where your endzone is, you run the risk of wasting a lot of time and effort running in circles. Set specific goals for each of your marketing efforts and ensure that every following step is taken in service of that goal.
To boil down the wise words of Coach Phillips and Coach Edwards, you must learn from your marketing mistakes. There is nothing worse than a company that continuously makes the same mistakes (such as allowing interns to have full control of social media, or promoting content on the wrong platform for their audience) even though they should know better.
Additionally, when analyzing your marketing efforts, be sure that your solutions truly solve the problem at hand instead of “blaming someone else.” Take a deep dive into your brand’s analytics platforms and build a strategy for improvement based on hard data and proven marketing strategy.
Not only wise words for the rest of your life, Coach Halas’s quote can be adapted into one simple statement for your brand: marketing matters. From SEO to social media strategy, it all counts and is well worth giving your best to find and win new customers for your business.
The Huddle
Whose marketing couldn’t use a bit of tough talk from some of football’s finest? With football season now fired up, it may be the perfect time to get inspired by these coaches in order to create marketing strategies that constantly improve, are consistent in quality, and take all marketing channels into consideration. Just remember, football season may be here for a few months a year, but it’s always game day for effective marketing.