The Marketing Perfect Storm in the Monday Morning Marketer

Ah, the perfect storm. A term derived from meteorological roots, made popular in fiction, and then again in a blockbuster movie of the same name. Our dear anonymous friends at Wikipedia would define this term as any event where a situation is aggravated drastically by an exceptionally rare combination of circumstances.

How does this relate to you and your marketing? Well, I’m glad you asked. It occurs to me weekly in my client consultations how rare that perfect marketing moment is. Rare, not due to a lack of planning or budget or concentrated effort, but rare due to the elusive nature of people and the old cliche (creative writers hate cliches) “best laid plans”. You simply cannot make people buy what you have, you can only create the optimal circumstances where someone may buy what you are selling.

Those optimal circumstances individually are not rare, but in combination, they are can be exceedingly difficult to achieve. Many who have been in business for awhile will agree that success is just not always in our control, but that does not mean we don’t welcome the challenge to try. There are four rare circumstances that can create set the stage for the marketing perfect storm:
1) Right product or service.
2) Right people.
3) Right time.
4) Right place.

Yes, the marketing perfect storm grows from this simple, yet elusive formula of you providing the right product or service to the right people at the right time in the right place. This is the foundation of marketing success. With tenacious research, instinct. commitment to growth and learning from mistakes, your dedication to navigating the marketing decision-making tree can eventually find you with these rare desirable marketing circumstances.

What happens when you get there? It all depends on if you prepared for success. If not, chaos ensues. If not, you achieve the marketing perfect storm… a perfectly orchestrated plan that generates growth and opportunity that you weren’t really prepared for! The storm.

Let’s say your marketing efforts succeed so perfectly, due to the four simple tenets above, can you manage inventory or personnel restraints? Can you migrate from being a solo preneur or solo manufacturer to a team fast enough to keep up with demand? Can you navigate momentum and ride the wave of requests for your time or products until the next plateau?

When marketing efforts make that rare connection where it all truly comes together as desired, you must be prepared to manage what comes as a result. A strong business plan and growth model will have you ready to raise sail and go with the flow. A weak point in your time management and preparedness for success will have you caught up in the vortex of ‘responsive marketing’ and you’ll lose the foothold you had.

Aim for the culmination of the four tenets of the marketing perfect storm, and add some safety measures to navigate the unchartered waters that come. Assume you are going to succeed every day in your business and be ready to enact your ’emergency success plan’ with necessary tools, staffing, and resources required so you can ride out the storm that follows with heroic grace!

This set of four criteria is both your recipe for greatest success and your recipe for disaster. At the epicentre of the storm is you… how can YOU manage if you happen to have all your marketing dreams come together as planned. How are you planning for the marketing perfect storm?