05 Jun Heavy Lifting

I have a client who deadlifts 235 pounds. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for a 5’9” woman. But if your brand is doing the heavy lifting, there’s probably something wrong with your marketing strategy.

What we call heavy lifting is when a company tries to sell both the category and the brand. For example, it takes a lot more time, money and energy to convince a non-coffee drinker that they should drink coffee (category) and that the coffee they drink should be Starbucks (brand) than it does to convince coffee drinkers that they should drink Starbucks version of coffee.

In the world of big ad agencies with big clients, there are pretty much two occasions where you do the heavy lifting. When you are the #1 brand in the category with the biggest marketing budget. Or if you are an entirely new product or service and there is no competition. Most of my clients these days are neither. But many of them are doing the heavy lifting when they don’t have to.

Sure you might have a product or service that everyone can use. But that doesn’t mean that everyone is your target. Especially when there is limited time, energy and budget to be spent on marketing. It’s too hard to convince a lot of folks they need you in the first place. Better to go after the folks who already want what you got or have a problem you can solve. There really are more than enough of them out there to make a small biz successful. The trick is finding them and making sure your message connects with what they want.

That’s how you work smarter, not harder on your marketing. And that leaves more time to work those biceps.