Marketing x Basketball: Pivot or Die

Marketing and basketball. Two “games” that are difficult to play successfully without employing the technique of pivoting.

There are several important applications of the concept of pivoting in marketing. Let’s get into it.

First, you can pivot successful elements from one area of your strategy to another area of your strategy. By extrapolating the best, most winning aspects of your various marketing initiatives, and by not being afraid of changing things up and exploring with different content and ideas, you can isolate WHAT it is about the successful strategies that makes them so successful, and eliminate bad strategies before they poison multiple different layers of your marketing efforts.

If something is working well in your emails, perhaps there is something there that can be pivoted to your social media strategy.

And this doesn't just apply to pivoting across platforms, either. Learn to pivot your messaging to apply to your secondary and tertiary audiences – what I like to call your “hidden” audiences.

The other application for pivoting in marketing is something I spoke about extensively in this previous article. This method of pivoting involves carefully studying marketing trends and tactics that work ON you so that they can work FOR you.

No need to recreate the wheel, love. We’re all being marketed to each and every day, constantly. Notice what draws you in and what pushes you away.

Don’t be afraid to change and experiment. Every smash hit was once just an idea that someone wasn’t sure if it was good enough to execute on.

Can brackets teach us something about marketing, too?

You bet!

Anyone with a robust marketing strategy probably has a marketing “bracket” that looks something like this:

When your favorite marketing channels face off against one another, which one wins?

Even if it's only mentally, successful marketers are constantly evaluating and comparing to see what is working across each channel. After all, you might have finite budget (who doesn’t?) or limited human capital (who doesn’t?). It’s important to show up in all the places online (and in person) where your audience is hanging out.

Read that again! That’s a golden nugget of golden truth right there.

If you can’t be everywhere, you only need to be in the places your audience hangs out.

If they aren’t on TikTok, don’t bother. If they’re not big into texting, don’t bother. If they don’t seek out content from influencers before buying your item, don’t bother.

Do you see where this is going?

Not every strategy can win, and sometimes, you can’t be everywhere at once. When you make your bracket for your marketing strategy, who gets eliminated round one? Who makes it to your Final 4? Sound off! 📣

Article written by Katie Goldhagen

Golden Hour Media & Strategy ⏳ helps clients expand their reach via thoughtful, tailored marketing strategy consulting. We help firms tell the unique story of their brand, determine what comes next in their marketing and growth strategies, and execute on those plans in a structured & creative manner. Learn more here.