Marketing is like Contra

I just finished reading Ian Lurie’s book on online marketing - a quick and clear read about online marketing. I recommend it if you have any interest in online marketing and want an overview of how it works, how to do it well, and what not to do. It also gives you some perspective on whether or not you can do it yourself. Ian highlights all the major parts to online marketing. And I’m sure I’m not the first to make the analogy that marketing sounds a lot like picking up women- dress appropriately, sound smart, know the room, make a connection, brag modestly, and observe and adjust (six major points of Ian’s book for marketing).

But I’m not sure that anyone has compared marketing to Contra, the Nintendo game. So here it goes. You’re a company and your running along the screen trying to stay alive by jumping and running, jumping and running. At some point you decide it’s a good idea to pick up some help- in Contra it’s a weapon, in the business world it’s marketing team or marketing consultant. Then there are two choices. You can either pick up the machine gun, which sprays weak bullets in all directions regardless of what’s in front of you- this is a marketing technique that Ian tries to discourage and a technique in Contra, and in business, that is usually only effective in the first couple of levels. The second choice is the laser. The laser shoots a strong, powerful beam right at its target. Sure it takes some skill and some extra aiming, but it will get you to level 3, 4, 5, and 6. This is the technique that Ian tries to highlight.

Too bad there isn’t up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, select, start for business, then we’d all have 30 lives.

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