Ok, let’s be honest. Marketers are really just less physically active ninjas.
While we marketers may not all practice our martial arts skills and train to be assassins and saboteurs every day (I am leaving that door open though), let’s look at exactly how marketers are basically the ninjas of the business world.
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1. Marketers are continuously training.
Ninjas are always training. They are constantly working on mastering new weapons and martial arts and staying prepared for their next mission. Their extreme training regime is one of the reasons ninjas are the legendary warriors known throughout history.
Every marketer I know is continuously trying to improve their marketing efforts. They find content about new marketing technologies, collaborating with other marketers to find new solutions to common problems, and even finding creative ways to improve their current efforts.
It’s important for marketers to keep training so that their marketing continues to improve and stays on the cutting edge of technology.
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We can help you train!
If you’re needing to hone your marketing skills, look no further than the Marketing Library. It has all the research and content you need to become a legendary marketing hero.
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2. Marketers have specific missions.
Ninjas weren’t employed in the same way armies were. While an army might have a broad mission to win a war, ninjas were given specific, important tasks that required precision. They might be tasked to assassinate a prominent opponent, incite rebellion, or even sabotage an enemy army.
Instead of being a brute force weapon, a ninja could end a war before a battle was ever fought by completing specific missions.
As a marketer, you are very similar in this respect (minus the references to violence). While sales may fulfill more of the marching army for your company, your job is to complete targeted missions to make their victory easier. For you to be effective you need to have a very specific mission, and a plan to accomplish your goals.
Defining a very specific win for each campaign can help direct your efforts and accomplish business goals.
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3. Marketers plan and anticipate reaction.
Ninjas spent a lot of time planning before they carried out a mission. If they were tasked with infiltrating a building, they would need to plan a way to get in and out. They also needed to have contingency plans for when things inevitably went wrong.
You are probably thinking that sounds like your campaign planning process. In fact, it probably is. A campaign plan includes specific goals and objectives and then a map for accomplishing those goals. Through analytics platforms you can see campaign metrics and react to low performance in real time.
The ability to plan and react to new developments in a campaign are key to being an effective marketer.
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4. Marketers have a huge arsenal.
A ninja’s arsenal was truly impressive, to say the least. They had the weapons to fight in hand-to-hand combat when necessary. But they also had the weapons and tools necessary to distract and impede an enemy from giving chase or fighting. From spears, swords, and daggers to darts, caltrops, and shuriken, the ninja was ready for anything.
As a marketer, you need have a large arsenal of marketing channels at your disposal. Each channel can help you reach your audience, but that doesn’t mean you should always use every available channel. The key is finding the right channels to enable your campaign to be successful.
While choosing the right marketing channels doesn’t immediately equate success, it can set your campaign along the right path.
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5. Marketers work from the shadows.
You know what you don’t see in the picture above? All the ninjas. That’s because ninjas work in the shadow and are correctly camouflaged.
This idea of a shadow warrior is actually one of the more prominent images of the legendary warriors. Most people think of a dark clad ninja lurking in the shadows or climbing across dark rooftops as they approach their target. The image is stuck in our collective mind.
Think of the most recent movies featuring ninjas and you probably can’t think of one where it didn’t feature such iconic representations.
For many marketers, this is a familiar concept. Most marketers don’t want their audience to realize they are being marketed to. Whether it is by sending emails “from” a specific person or hiring brand ambassadors to talk up their company on forums and social media, marketers tend to work from the shadows for the sake of their company.
Remember, your audience not your marketing is the hero of the story.
The ninja is one of the most iconic legendary warriors from history. However, there are a lot of similarities between the ninja’s discipline and strategies and that of marketers. By continuing to improve and train yourself like a ninja, you can become known to legend as an iconic marketer.
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