PLAYING THE LONG GAME

I love this quote by Seth Godin, from is is Marketing.

ere’s a groundswell of people doing marketing because they can make things be er. ey’re prepared to engage with the market because they know they can contribute to our culture. People like you.

When you’re building a long game, the metrics start with a ention. en come followers, subscribers, and—finally—customers. e entire process has hidden potential to accelerate your growth, but it takes time.

World-renowned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has a long-term vision to own the New York Jets. But this goal began with his longterm mindset, and he is using it to build an audience and gain their a ention. is is simply step one of his bigger vision. He builds connection by publicly sharing this plan—including breaking down his steps of cash and connection to the various audiences he needs, from divisions of athlete representation to Super Bowl marketing. He is building an audience by connecting with the community to support his grand vision, and selling to this audience. Even if he never reaches his long-term goal, he has built a Groundswell of a ention and growth for all his business interests along the way.

I have spent the last eight years preparing for this book and launching the Groundswell Marketing Podcast. Right now, I have thousands of followers across social networks, and people are starting to notice. It has taken me years of posting content and engaging daily.

When you know where your long game is headed, you can feel confident in the process—as long as there is movement. Movement is key to growth. When you plant a seed, nothing is visible on the surface, but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not growing. Keep planting and watering your seeds. e long game knows that sustainable growth is not realized by ge ing caught up in the size of your audience, but instead by focusing on engagement and relationship.

As you produce interesting content and provide value, you will build an audience. But beware: many marketers get caught up in building an audience without actually building a client base. A large portion of the audience can grow into passive observers rather than connected members. As every master gardener knows, it takes a great deal of planning, patience, planting, watering, and weeding to cultivate a beautiful garden. But they also know you can’t single-handedly be the source of a garden’s vitality; and, at some point, you’ve got to stop watering dead plants. It can be hard to accept this, especially when you’ve worked so hard to grow what you have.

But if growth is the goal, you have to adapt when something’s no longer life-giving. It’s the same with your customer base. Let’s say you have ten thousand followers but barely five hundred are active customers. Don’t waste vital time, resources, and energy on the 9,500 who aren’t engaged. Devote that time to cultivating customers who are yielding vital growth. Sure, you can keep pouring into unresponsive aspects of your audience, hoping they will come to life. But sometimes you just have to move on and remove the dead weight to make room for new seedlings to grow.