Are you in the way? Or are you along the way?

That is the question that you must be able to answer when it comes to your marketing initiatives.

I recently decided to visit New York City with my family. Coordinating a schedule with everyone’s sightseeing activities was no small task. As it turns out our trip to the Empire State Building had to be bumped in the schedule as we were waiting for a clear day. We were to go up the building on the afternoon of our last day. And on that clear sunny afternoon, my family and I were barreling down West 34th Street, like a bunch of camera commandos on a mission. Nothing would get in our way to slow us down.

And then it happened. Some street vendor was waving a brochure and saying something about cutting down your time in the line up to get into the Empire State Building. He was quite astute to what mattered to us most. He saw us coming and he totally understood the value of time to us. So his message was completely focused on the time-saving element. Amazingly he got everyone’s attention and we stopped to see if this was myth or reality. And in 5 minutes, he gave us the scoop on how long the line-up gets. Yes, it was almost as if we had come along as pre-sold customers. We gladly bought his tickets to the short line at a 30% premium. This guy was no longer in the way. He was along the way and was able to speed us along our journey faster than we had anticipated.

I am not the first person to point it out. But let’s be clear. All marketing is an interruption. Of course we live in a world where it is part of how we discover and learn about things that may have an impact on how we carry on. Up to some threshold, both in quantity and density, it is comfortably tolerated. People know that they have to take the good with the bad.

But what swings the pendulum from high annoyance to comfortably tolerated, is not just the quantity and density, it also about the context of the message. The context that complements your marketing message brings with it value and respect for what you are offering. You may have an advertisement, but it is not treated as negative disruption if in fact it complements the interests of the target buyer in some way. The right context not only gives your marketing message the strength to resonate, it also cedes you some credibility for actually having your message placed in that particular context. Both of these factors increase the potential engagement that your message will receive.

Although we don’t see as much of it anymore, the web pop-up banner is just an ideal example of in-your-face, attention-stealing mechanism that just does not earn trust. And on the flip side, visitors can’t help but notice those context-sensitive headings that present the familiar phrase “You may also like…”. So that is the goal. First, that marketing message must be created so that it resonates with the target audience. And then you must find or create the right context for it to truly get the strongest resonance. You must find a way to be along the way that your buyer is travelling and not in the way.

GoPro has done its IPO, and the founder Nicholas Woodman just became a billionaire. It is a story that I have followed for quite some time. But, it is not because of the product’s exceptional ability to capture life’s adventures like they have never been captured before. What really caught my attention was the background story on Nicholas Woodman, and how his previous failed startup really changed his business outlook. And that has some real relevance for anyone struggling to bring something new to the market.

Nick Woodman had an internet-based company, funBug, that flamed out in the 2001 dot.com crash. The fact that the company was venture-backed left a quite an impression. It was about the dependency on someone else to keep the business going. He didn’t like it. So he vowed to bootstrap his next company and not be dependent on someone else to write a check in order to keep the company going. He chose to focus on something small, that he could control and have it be profitable from the start.

So he focused on this wrist-based strap for disposable waterproof cameras. And he slaved away at this design for 2 years. It was only supposed to take 4 months. But it was a constant process of design, material selection and sewing prototypes. And in 2004, the one-man company debuted its wrist-based film camera at an Action Sports Retailer trade show, and received a $2,000 order from a Japanese distributor. What a start. And in 2005 they became a 2 person company. And in 2006 they became a 3 person company. Not exactly stellar sales growth. But they were focused on the problem they were solving.

What is so important to recognize is that Nick Woodman really understood the problem he was solving. (i.e. initially, it was constantly loosing disposable cameras while surfing). He experienced if first hand and had an unquashable desire to create a product that solved it. It was all about the need to mount and control the camera by one individual.

And as it turns out, this is the most important question for every company to have a clear understanding of. What problem are you solving? And of course, there has to be the big qualifying question. Does anyone care that it is being solved? If you can get the right answer to these 2 questions, you have a business. And when Nick Woodman received that first order, he had the correct answers to both questions.

Listening to Nick Woodman’s interview at the IPO, shows that he has not lost his focus on what matters. When asked about how he can prevent his product from being commoditized, or crashing like the once popular Flip camera (that Cisco had acquired for $600m and discontinued), he is still quite glued to the fundamentals. His answer:

“It starts with solving real problems for consumers. People buy solutions. … They don’t buy gadgets.”

And here is how he describes his company:

“We make it easy for passionate people around the world to capture and share incredible life experiences in the form of compelling content.”

Definitely no mention of any technology gadgetry there. Of course, if you have followed the evolution of the HERO models, it is very clear that GoPro pays a huge amount of attention to the underlying technology. But it is just enabling technology. Driving the whole vision is the real needs of the customer base, and making sure that GoPro can satisfy those needs better than anyone else.

So there you have it. One person’s passion to understand and solve a problem not only leads to happy customers; but it also brings a host of insights that allow both the solution and the customer needs to evolve together. GoPro has been driven by a discipline that has created an exceptional brand, and quite a large company. Hat’s off to their success.

“Get to the point” has never been more at the forefront of our subconscious mind than it is in present day. Attention is so subdivided in the internet era, making it so much more important to communicate our message in the utmost brevity.

Tell me in one paragraph.

Tell me in one sentence.

Tell me in one word.

If you want to extend the conversation, you must bring meaning to the first words you say, that is relevant to your target audience. Otherwise, “Gongggg!!!”, and this Gong Show goes on perpetually.

I recall an associate telling me a story where a new staffer was preparing to give a presentation about a proposed new initiative, to the CEO of Nortel. The presenter had prepared a slide deck of 40 slides. But just prior to the actual start of the presentation, the CEO says to him: “Just give me your best 3”. Being on-the-spot in this situation made it exceedingly difficult to be effective in getting the point across. But at least he was told up front about the attention span that he was going to get, and I am sure that he learned a valuable lesson in brevity.

Another excellent example of this when startups are presenting their business case with the goal of obtaining investment capital. Whether the presenter is at a public pitch event such as Startup Weekend or within the offices of the venture capital firm, the scenario is the same. Much of the important decision making will still happen in the first 5 minutes, whether you are scheduled for a longer time span or not. The number of winning investments is finite. And the VC knows that he must dismiss the non-starters as quickly as possible, in order to continue on the quest for the right investment. If your message does not resonate in 5 minutes, you are done.

Wherever it occurs, this ultra-fast processing of information is borne out of the fact that we are truly in the information age, and there is no shortage of information that is flowing. In fact, there is a continual opening of the tap and the flow of information continues to increase. Consequently individuals are now processing the flow in a rapid fire manner by looking for quick reasons to disregard messaging before investing a deeper level of attention. And it happens whether people are deciding whether to read a book or open an email.

Without question, the universe of writing is changing to adapt to the new behaviors of readers. Within the book publishing industry, we are seeing authors put extra attention on first sentences, as well as building up to the plot much more rapidly than in the past. Readers want to get to “the point” sooner, rather than later. I don’t know how much of a chance a 1,300 page classic like War and Peace would have, if it was a new release in present day.

Within the world marketing, getting attention to the information that you have to offer, has to work well within this new paradigm. It has to resonate immediately with the audience or else it flows down the drainage pipe, never to be given a second thought. Extra attention must be given to all things that our viewing audience will see first. First sentence. First paragraph. Executive summary. Subheading titles. All of these build on each other in rapid succession to capture and hold attention. And for you to do this effectively, means you must really know your buyer and what will resonate with them.

People get excited at the start of a new project. The vision of the gains to be made in a positive outcome really gets the energy and enthusiasm pumped up. The excitement of the start keeps the adrenaline flowing and the whole project gets a strong push in launching. No doubt, this is important. But the positive outcomes will only be realized if we have the discipline to sustain our efforts. Persistence, adaptation, and commitment to the long run, must also be fueled.

Whether you are growing a company, growing a following, or growing a brand, it is a marathon. As is highlighted in a recent study by Inc. Magazine,

“The only statistically significant predictor of a company’s future success is steady growth; short- and even long-term bursts mean almost nothing.”

Clearly this insight must be applied to your demand generation processes. Acquiring and nurturing prospective customers is a steady and on-going process. All the hoopla, glitz and swag that is injected at the start of a new marketing campaign, cannot alone deliver long term success.

But the marathon requires a different set of skills than the sprint. And hence, a different set of metrics to ensure you are achieving the slow and steady set of incremental gains, that will deliver both long term growth and sustainability. So the focus must be on determining the activities that are needed on a continuous basis, and how are we measuring individual and aggregated effectiveness.

Choosing metrics, measuring them, and interpreting them, must relate to your primary objective. So prior to starting the marathon, you must be clear on your destination, and the underlying assumptions which you hold to be true. Especially now, in the mobile-centric digital era that we are in, there is an ever growing number of things that can be tracked and measured. Ultimately, they all relate to the buyer persona and their journey through their buying cycle. But establishing and maintaining the right data set, which gives your business the right report card, is not always easy to establish, and will not stay static.

So what does it take to get this right? It requires a set of processes that are geared to uncovering and understanding why prospective buyers move through the buying cycle in the way that they do. We cannot assume that we have an inherent understanding of customers. We must seek out the data that explains the behavior that we see. And we must determine the right mix of marketing activities that will drive the data that moves you closer to your goals. And this is what the industry refers to as Revenue Performance Management. Eloqua nicely defines it as follows:

“Revenue Performance Management (RPM) is a systematic approach to identifying the drivers and impediments to revenue, rigorously measuring them, and then pulling the economic levers that will optimize marketing ROI and top line growth.”

It may all sound like an unrealizable utopia for your business growth. But the facts are well rooted in the results of the Inc. survey of companies who demonstrated sustained growth over the period 2007-2012. Average annual growth rate amongst companies over diverse industries was 35%. Not too bad in an economic period of huge uncertainty.