What do you do behind closed doors?

Tony Robbins tells a fantastic story about legendary basketball star Steph Curry. As the story goes, Curry takes 500 3-point practice shots a day, or 3,500 a week, 14,000 a month and 168,000 shots a year. Over a 15-year professional career, that totals just over 2.5 million practice shots. 

During that same time, Curry took 15,000 3-point shots during NBA games, making 3,000 of them to consequently be considered the greatest of all time.

Less than one tenth of 1% of all his shots were taken during games in public. But the success of those shots came down to the millions of shots he took in practice, behind closed doors. 

What does this have to do with marketing?

Fair question. And the answer is – a lot! When Robbins tells this story, he says “you get rewarded in public for what you practice in private”.

For marketers, it would be foolhardy to invest everything in one untried campaign and launch it to market hoping it hits the mark with your prospects and drives tons of engagement, leads and sales. 

Instead, it makes sense to be in market all the time, using customer data and research and the results of previous campaigns to continually iterate and evolve your messages and media. It’s a process of continuous improvement.

All that work behind closed doors creates better performing assets and activity and drives success over time. Overnight success is a myth – you need to put in the hard yards every day.

The bonus for all that practice is valuable visibility

When it comes to content marketing, you have many touchpoints and opportunities to test your messages and media mixes to get in front of prospects when they are in research mode.

By being in market all the time, getting in the reps and flexing those marketing muscles in an effort to improve, you also become exceedingly visible. 

And that’s gold to keep you top of mind during long buying cycles where around 95% of the time your B2B prospects are not actively buying your category. When they eventually become active buyers, that investment in being top of mind will pay you back in spades. 

Don’t think for a minute that every post, every article or every piece of long-form content will be (or has to be) a winner. There’ll be some standouts among what you produce and publish, but the trick is to go to market consistently and build a foundation that will make success more likely with every additional shot you take.

Sticking with basketball legends, Michael Jordan once said “I missed 100% of the shots I didn’t take”. You might not score with every shot, but you have to take one to have any hope of scoring. 

You need to start by taking a shot

Everyone needs to start somewhere, and if you’re yet to take a shot at content marketing, or if you’re lacking in consistency when it comes to getting your messages to market, the good news is you don’t have to go it alone.

We can help get the program started, and you’ll be out there taking your shots and scoring goals in no time at all.