Sailboat racing is all about continuously optimizing. So is marketing.
In sailboat racing, you don’t just point the sailboat in the direction of the finish line and hope for the best. You keep checking the wind, the currents, the other boats on the course. Sometimes you tack to better catch the wind. You adjust the sails accordingly, and frequently, while on the course. At times you even pull out a different sail depending on the wind and its direction.
All the various elements, and crew, need to be working together. If crew members are doing all sorts of random things without continually working together and optimizing the sailboat to win, the sailboat will undoubtedly falter, lose its speed. The sails will luff (flap around aimlessly). The sailboat risks losing all its momentum, losing the wind in its sails. And not making it to the finish line and/or losing the race.
Occasionally, I see companies just do the minimal in marketing and hope for the best. They may use marketing sporadically. Or they don’t bother to regularly optimize their marketing and may state that things are “good enough.” They may think they have some wind in their sails, but don’t realize that with strong and optimized marketing they can get to the end point much faster, with less resistance. Without continuing to optimize based on all the conditions, their sails (company) start to luff. And this dramatically slows down their ability to win the race (meet their objectives).
As someone who has raced sailboats in many races on the Puget Sound, and who worked tirelessly with the rest of the crew continuously to optimize the boat, I can tell you that all those nuanced adjustments can make a huge difference. We often won.
Not optimizing enables the competitors, seen and unseen, to overtake you.
If you want help optimizing your marketing strategy and implementation, email me at By the Sea Communications. I’ll help you optimize your company’s marketing and set you on a course to win your race.
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The feature photo on this blog is from when I was working on a tender to support a US crew racing a TP52 sailboat in the MedCup. It is on the Mediterranean near the coast of Alicante, Spain.
The second photo is with our captain (center), who always made us optimize, and partial crew after winning another sailboat race on the Puget Sound. I am in the colorful hat with pink sunglasses.
