How to balance short-term and long-term thinking in marketing

Ever hear of the term “hangry”? I’m sure you have.

It’s when you get so hungry that you start to get a bit angry.

Admittedly, I get like that sometimes. My wife and family will attest. 🙄

And when I’m hungry, I don’t want food later. I want it now.

As humans, our natural tendency is to think short-term when we’re hungry. We need food today, not tomorrow!

And it’s the same with your business. When you need members, you need them now, not tomorrow.

So, how do you balance the short-term needs with the long-term goal of getting full?

Good marketing requires a balance of short-term and long-term thinking.

And how does one balance short-term with long-term thinking? Let’s investigate the options.

Short-term tactics:

1. Asking for referrals
2. Direct sales outreach
3. Improvements to your website
4. Running Google or Facebook Ads
5. Offering limited-time promotions or incentives
6. Publishing posters around your location or sending post cards

Long-term tactics:

1. Organizing events
2. Creating blog content
3. Redesiging your website
4. Surveying your members
5. Publishing daily on social media
6. Building relationships with brokers
7. Developing your target market profile
8. Optimizing your website for search engines
9. Updating your photography and shooting videos
10. Analyzing your Google Analytics for potential opportunities
11. Reaching out to local media to pitch a story about your space
12. Encouraging reviews from your members on Google My Business
13. Documenting your systems and processes to continually improve them

The list of long-term tactics are many, but almost none of them will get you an immediate result (unless you’re lucky).

The best marketing is like farming, not hunting.

If you continually plant seeds, nurture them, pull the weeds, till the soil, and do it all consistently, you’ll reap the harvest.

Yes, you’ll need to hunt sometimes, but that can’t be the core part of your strategy.

The key isn’t to ignore the short-term. You definitely want to be getting results quickly.

But the most successful companies always build long-term thinking into the heart of their marketing strategy.

Are you farming or hunting right now?