What my dogs have taught me about marketing

In 2007, my wife Katy and I adopted Crosby, a three year old walker hound. (At least we’ve been told he’s a walker hound; we really have no way of knowing for sure.) A few years later, we found Ellie at the local humane society and she quickly became Crosby’s younger sister.

As strategic marketers, we’re challenged everyday at studioSavvy with finding unique ways to communicate with our clients’ prospects, current customers, employees and partners. Coming up with the right message, the right voice, and the right vehicle to use. Recently I was working with a client on a new project and it occurred to me that much of what I had to learn about communicating with my dogs is applicable in the marketing world.

Obviously, communicating with people is much more complex than communicating with dogs. I certainly don’t mean to oversimplify what we do day in and day out. But at a core level, starting, building and growing the relationships I have with my dogs is similar to initiating and fostering business relationships through marketing.

Here’s a little of what I mean.

Simple is good. Crosby and Ellie know a few simple commands: No, Sit, Drop, Come, and so on. I’ve learned that if I stick to those, we usually do okay. Where disconnects start is when I become impatient, start using words they don’t know, or simply forget they’re dogs and talk to them like they’re people. “Crosby, get off the damn couch!” has a 0% success rate.

The same is true for crafting marketing messages to people. Too much detail can often water down messages and leave prospects or customers without a clear idea of what they should do next. At studioSavvy, we keep marketing pieces simple and make sure what we’re asking the audience to do—visit a website, make a call, provide feedback—can’t possibly be confused or missed.

Loyalty and trust are earned. As adopt-a-hounds, Ellie and Crosby both had trouble getting used to their new home. Katy and I had to work hard to earn and keep their trust through honesty, leadership and patience.

Building a strong brand is a process. Time, consistency and hard work are keys to growing an army of loyal customers and associates. It’s important we be realistic with goals and expectations and set reasonable benchmarks that we can use to measure progress regularly.

Be consistent. Over time, Crosby and Ellie have learned to follow a pretty good routine. Get up in the morning, go for a long walk, eat breakfast while Katy and I get ready for work, go out to relieve themselves, hang out at the house until we get home from work, long walk #2, have dinner, cuddle, go to bed. When we follow that plan, all is okay. But skip that morning walk or try to shortchange evening cuddle time and they’re thrown completely out of whack.

Crafting strong brand and marketing messages is no different in that consistency is key.  Just as it took time for my dogs to learn their routine, it can take audiences time to become true believers in a brand. This certainly doesn’t mean we have to use the same words or images in every message we create, but finding ways to connect everything back to the overall brand is critical to shortening the learning curve.

Be proactive. Crosby has several quirky personality traits, but none quite as quirky as his violent fear of bicycles. We don’t know where the fear stems from, only that it seems to be completely incurable and leads to extremely embarrassing moments when we’re out and about. We’ve had to learn to live with it and now, every time we see a bike we immediately stop, ask Crosby to sit, and do our best to keep his attention on us until the bike passes.

As we build strategic marketing plans, we try to be proactive with our messages. It’s important to look ahead and get out in front of opportunities, cyclical shifts in the market and potential questions from audiences. At the same time, it’s important for us to be flexible and able to move quickly if appropriate.

Know your audiences’ motivators. When I want to teach Ellie something new (how to shake, lie down, drop a piece of roadkill she picks up on the street, whatever), I know that I can motivate her through food. If she does what I ask, she gets a treat. When she fails, no treat. Sticking with this simple process has proven to be a great way to help her learn. Crosby could care less about food. It took a while to figure this out, but he’s motivated by hunting. When he needs to learn something new, I have to figure out ways to incorporate a hunting-like challenge into the task for him to overcome. Two completely different ways of motivating my dogs to ultimately master the same task.

Audiences we communicate with are no different. Internal audiences will likely need to be motivated differently than external ones. While one segment may be motivated to act by special offers, others may be motivated by the promise of an exceptional customer service experience. The trick is to figure out what their individual hot-buttons are and push them.

So to quickly sum up, in no way am I suggesting that you think of your audiences as dogs. (Doing so would probably take you in the opposite direction of where we want you to go. Quickly.) What I am suggesting is that it’s important to keep these core marketing points in mind as you’re segmenting audiences and developing your strategic marketing plan.

We’d love to talk with you more about these ideas. And if you’ve learned anything from your pets that you can relate back to your challenges as a marketer, drop us a line. If we get enough, it would be great fun for us to compile and share them with everyone.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,
Hunter