As I pondered what the topic would be for this week’s blog post, I wrote in Google Keep: “Belichick on Marketing: Focus on Fundamentals; Focus on the Details; Prepare for All Situations; Make Adjustments; Do Your Job.” I think these are five lessons digital marketers can learn from Belichick, who is driven to succeed and have the entire team and organization on the same page and pulling in the same direction.
Focus on the fundamentals
Belichick is not a marketer, but I think his approach to coaching football can help digital marketers like us better do our jobs. Belichick stresses the importance of practicing, hitting the weight room, watching film and learning the playbook: The basics, the fundamentals. For us, what are the fundamentals? For traditional marketing it was the four Ps: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. It’s not so much different now in the grand scheme of things, but the world wide web has made “place” not as critical for digital marketing agencies.
Still, we can drive traffic to our clients’ websites and businesses, but they will need to have the right mix of products/services and prices. When we work with clients, we need to help them understand marketing fundamentals and how “we can drive a horse to water, but we can’t make him drink.”
Pay attention to the details
Belichick’s father, the late Steve Belichick, literally wrote the book on scouting football players (read an interesting piece here). In Football Scouting Methods (you can pick up the Kindle version for 99 cents here), his father was meticulous in how to set up the notebook, what to watch for during warm-ups, what to watch for with kickers, wide receivers and other players during warm-ups. His father was also a master at breaking down film to review players, teams and tendencies.
To do digital marketing right, we need to focus on the details. We need to know who our clients’ top competitors are; we need to know what is happening in the industry; we need to know what the market forecast is like; we need to research keywords; we need to conduct search engine optimization audits to determine if there are any deficiencies in our clients’ websites that are creating obstacles when people are conducting searches; and so much more.
Prepare for all situations
Belichick is the master of situational football. Not only do Belichick-coached teams practice the fundamentals, not only do they learn the Xs and Os, but they practice situations. For example, the ball is on the New England 27 yard line, there is 1:48 left in the game, the Patriots have the ball with only one time out and they are down by two points. So, they will practice to move the ball down the field in order to get in a position to kick a field goal. Or, something that happened during the 2017-2018 season was the need for the offense to get off the field in a hurry and let the field goal team come on with no timeouts and the clock close to running out. They did it in a game against the Saints, and kicker Stephen Gostkowski came on to kick the game-winning field goal. This was not the first time the Patriots had to do it; Gostkowski said the team has practiced it a hundred times over the years (see story here).
As digital marketers, we need to “prepare” for all situations in order to serve our clients better. We will be in this position by focusing on the fundamentals, paying attention to details and doing the research in order to create the optimal content (my digital marketing agency focuses on SEO, content creation and social media management) to attract visitors to our clients’ websites with the hopes of converting them into customers.
Make half-time adjustments
One of the reasons why it is so difficult to beat the New England Patriots is because of the half-time adjustments the team makes. In the most recent game, in which the Patriots came from behind to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship game, the Jags played a nearly flawless first half and went up 14-3 before the Pats closed the gap to 14-10 heading into halftime. In the second half, the passing and running attack were just not there for the Jaguars like it had been earlier in the game. The Patriots fell behind 20-10, but won in yet another Tom Brady come-from-behind victory in which the future Hall of Fame quarterback connected with WR Danny Amendola on two TDs in the fourth quarter.
Making adjustments is the hallmark of digital marketing. We test photos; we test headlines; we test content; and we adjust. The nice thing about our industry is the ease in which digital marketers can make the adjustments and how quickly we can do it.
Digital marketers: Do your job!
Belichick and his coaching staff do all they can do to put the team in a position to win. How do they do this? They focus on the fundamentals; they pay attention to the details; they prepare for all situations; they make half-time adjustments; and they make sure they execute their assigned responsibilities. “Do Your Job” has become Belichick’s mantra. What he means is to execute at a high level the task you have been assigned. Interestingly enough, Belichick doesn’t want you to do everything, but he wants you to perform the job you have to do flawlessly. If your assignment is to cover the wide receiver who runs a short route, then stick with that receiver, don’t try to second-guess where the QB is going with the ball.
I hope all of us will do our jobs and deliver the best experiences to our clients. And, with Belichick and the Patriots, this is a continuous improvement loop. They are never satisfied, and there is always more work to do to be better.
When you think about it, what is the job of digital marketers? We can look at it a number of ways: Increase traffic to a website; increase engagement on social media; raise awareness; provide solutions, etc. But, the bottom line for businesses is making a profit in order to keep on doing what they are doing. So, our jobs is to help our for-profit clients increase revenue. For our governmental or nonprofit clients, our job is to raise awareness so more people can utilize the services provided or participate in the programs offered.
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