Hmm…so you love marketing and poker – good to know…

Many people would argue that this thought experiment is too uninteresting as the two disciplines have nothing in common. But is that in fact so….?

If you wake me up at night, I’ll always claim that I’m pretty good at both. The process of being successful in either marketing or poker is actually not so different that you might think. Let’s think about it for a while…

What makes a good poker player? (Besides being lucky, which is taken out of the equation in this example). Well, before you sit down at the final table, you need to set up a clear strategy on how you’ll play the game.

First of all, you PLAN ahead - if you’re chip leader (have the highest budget) you’ll have to go the table with a clear goal to dominate it.

If you’re low-stacked, you must plan to focus on creativity and to do things your opponents will not expect. Then you’ll EXECUTE your plan at the table and react if your opponents suddenly change their game plan.

You learn after each hand and then you take a moment to analyze it; the obvious thing - did you win the hand? How did your opponents react to your strategy and could you do anything better? In short, you OPTIMIZE your performance….

Does that sound familiar working with marketing…?

You can only be good at marketing if you know your audience well. (Besides being lucky, which – again - is taken out of the equation in this example).

That’s why it’s so damn important that you do your homework right. Get to know your customers’ environment, find out what triggers them and PLAN how you can respond to their needs.

When you have a thorough understanding of your marketspace and you have your operational strategy ready, you EXECUTE your marketing campaigns. We all know that not all campaigns perform as good as the next.

So, always evaluate your campaigns and identify successful performance indicators. With this knowledge in mind, you’re ready to OPTIMIZE your overall results.

So in my world, you have to attack the challenges in both marketing and poker in the exact same way. At least that’s always worked for me (except when my opponents have luck on their sides….)