As the weather heats up, an exciting event is about to take place. Brood V Cicadas are preparing to make their appearance in parts of New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia.
I already know what you’re thinking.
Why does this blog post sound like something I read in National Geographic once, and what the heck do cicadas have to do with marketing?
To answer your questions, National Geographic already beat us to the punch three years ago, and quite a lot.
As marketers, we have a lot to learn from cicadas.
Cicadas live underground for seventeen years, only emerging when they’re ready to mate. But if you think they’re wasting away their seventeen years watching Netflix, think again. While cicadas are underground, they’re doing something remarkable. They’re transforming from one fully-functional state to another. Flawlessly.
Not only that, but these creatures are downright strategic, and they’re gaming the system.
Cicadas are aware that they’re irresistible to most predators, and the predators who seek them out generally have 2 to 5-year lifecycles. Cicada broods, on the other hand, have 13 or 17-year lifecycles, and the number 17 is significant here in that it’s a prime number. By cycling at a large prime number, cicadas minimize the number of encounters they have with most predators.
Pretty strategic, right?
Now let’s examine some of the ways we can apply this cicada-strategic precision to our marketing strategies.
Set the “Underground” Work
Cicadas are wise to do all of their important work underground and out of sight. This gives them the space and the freedom to undergo their transformations. Start by setting your “underground” work, your strategy. Allow yourself that same space and freedom to develop a solid long-term strategy that will hold up “above ground.”
Think about it.
Would you rather have a haphazard strategy that yields instant results but then crumbles when put to the test, or a solid strategy that takes longer to achieve results but leads to more qualified, longer-term leads?
We certainly know what the cicada would choose.
Don’t Give Away All Your Secrets
There’s a reason Colonel Sanders doesn’t share his secret chicken recipe, and you shouldn’t either. Well, not your chicken recipe, but you get what I’m saying.
Sanders keeps his cards close to his chest for a good purpose – he doesn’t want his product to taste like everyone else’s.
While a little bit of transparency never hurt anyone, you should be careful not to expose everything that goes on behind closed doors. Just as cicadas do their most important work underground, you also want to keep some of your magic, well, magical. It gives your final product more intrigue, gets more people talking, and can’t be easily replicated.
So unless you’re selling step-by-step “how-to” guides, keep a little mystery, a little intrigue to your work, and watch how your efforts grab people.
Fail in a Safe Place
In marketing, just as with anything else, failure is inevitable.
Take a minute to absorb this. Let it sink in.
Ready? Okay. Now for the good news.
It’s okay to fail sometimes. Failure brings about change. It teaches valuable lessons. It keeps us alert. The key is to fail in as safe of a place as possible for minimal damage.
The cicadas have this concept down pat, as they’ve meticulously strategized their activities in such a way that they leave the smallest possible margin for catastrophic error. They’ve carefully determined the best time to emerge from underground to avoid encounters with predators.
That’s not to say there will never be predators. There will always be predators, whether that’s disgruntled customers, aggressive competitors, negative reviews, etc. The idea is that there will be less of them if you’re more adequately prepared.
So if you want to try something new with your marketing strategy, by all means go for it. But you’re better off starting out small, studying your progress, and allowing for failure in manageable doses. Take the time to look at the analytics. Listen to what people are responding to. Gather all the information you need. Because if you decide to just “go big or go home” and run full-speed with an idea before it’s really ready, more often than not, you’ll end up going home.
Slow & Steady Wins the Right Customers
I mentioned earlier that cicada lifecycles range between 13-17 years. And although we’re trying to mimic some of their strategy, if it takes you that long to develop a sound marketing plan, something is seriously wrong.
But there is something to be gained here.
The inbound marketing methodology is a slow-burn process, and yields slow-burn results. But done right, it can pay off in spades. While you can’t expect overnight results from your inbound campaigns, you can expect highly-qualified leads over time. And more qualified leads means greater profitability. You just need to invest the time into nurturing them.
So if you want to develop a sustainable marketing strategy that can really deliver quality results, get in touch for a free website marketing assessment, and pretty soon you’ll be gaming the system too.
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