How To Catch a Big Fish? What Do a Fisherman and a Marketer Have in Common?

At first, it may seem as if there is nothing at all, but if you look closely, or better yet, if you go fishing, and in the anticipation of a catch, think about the high matters of marketing, you can find a lot of similarities between these seemingly different fields.

Think about a seasoned fisherman who prepares his fishing gear to go out and reel in a catch. Now imagine a marketer, whose life mission is to attract as many customers as possible, and to do it, he needs to take action. And, like a fisherman, a marketer goes to the beach, that separates the consumers and the sellers, and throws his bait waiting for fish to bite it.

Know your fish

Ask fisherman about the art of fishing and he will tell you everything: where to catch, where it spawns, which bait is better….. If you tell them that catching salmon is the same thing as catching a carp, he will laugh in your face. A fisherman always knows his fish, because his success depends on it.

Ask a marketer about his target audience and he will tell you all about it. Unless, of course, he is a inexperienced marketer :-) He will tell you about their interests, hobbies, tastes, and problems. He will tell you the story of a typical customer, his position, daily routine, his hopes and dreams.

Choose a fishing place

Fisherman look for “fishing holes”, a marketer looks for a profitable niche with high demand or where it may potentially appear. A Marketer investigates the market where he plans to promote his product: its richness, competitive activity, demand dynamics. He finds unoccupied niche, which could give him an abundant catch. Fisherman examines the pond, asking other fishermen if it`s a good place to fish.

Why is the choice of location so important? Because even the sweetest bait does not work in an empty pond.

Bait is a must! Don`t throw the bait right away. First, you need to lure your fish, let it know that there’s a lot of goodies here. Fish follow scent, as well as other fish.

The same rules apply to marketing. Customers also need to be “lured” — you need to give something for free, lower prices for your first customers, create awareness of the product and the company in particular.

The choice of the lure will define your success. Not every fish likes the same lure as there are no universal solutions for each target audience.

Experiment with bait

Fish are a whimsical creature. One day it prefers bread, the other it`s happy with moth. No veteran fisherman goes fishing with only one kind of bait.

What about marketing ? Bait may be an advertising message as much as it is a landing page of your website. A marketer needs to experiment with text, pictures, commercial proposals, calls to actions.

Use several fishing rods

Which fisherman will catch more fish, the one who has one fishing rod or three? What marketer would lead more customers to the company — someone who only uses contextual advertising, or who operates in a complex and uses several tools? Of course, the second one. This is the law of business

One rod limits the number of caught fish, as much as the number of experiments with bait. But if you have three or four rods, you can catch more fish and use different baits.

The same applies to customer attraction tools; use them in complex, experiment, analyze the effectiveness and see if you need to add one or more baits in your marketing arsenal.

Fish in deep waters

In shallow water, you can catch a lot of fry, but the real fish dwells in deep waters. How do you get a hold these fish? You can throw the net as far as possible, or you can take a boat and swim to the middle of a pond.

In marketing, you need to wade into the depths of the consciousness of your customers, so you could speak directly to their emotions. As soon as you reach out to the hearts of customers, you will increase the value of your product, because people are willing to pay more for emotion, rather than just for the goods.

Learn patience

No one will teach you to be more patient than fishermen; they can look at one spot for hours, waiting to see a twitching float.

Many marketers who want to get everything here and now need to learn this invaluable skill. That is why many of them discard half of the available marketing tools for the sake of 1–2 (mostly contextual advertising and SEO) so that they could see an immediate result, completely ignoring amazing tools and strategies such as Social Media, content, or video marketing. These tools take more time but they will surely help you catch a big fish!

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