Lead generation is critical for any successful marketing campaign. It is the lead generation that, when carefully planned, allows a marketer (or businessperson who is doing marketing) to create a situation where customers are coming to buy the product or service rather than the marketer running after clients for business.

As an online and offline marketer, I’m always on the lookout for interesting ways to look at marketing that I can share with you. Recently I came upon an example from a totally different type of activity which rang a bell in my head. It was one of those examples that made me say “Aha- isn’t that just like what marketing is about?”

I was having a conversation with a friend, now retired from business, about his younger days. On his vacations he used to do some saltwater fishing off the coast of Florida. He told me of a tactic that any fisherman worth his salt (pardon the expression) does before the baited fishing lines go into the water. The well-trained fisherman throws chum into the water as a preliminary step to attract fish to the area near the fishing boat. Chum are chunks of fish bait, usually cut up from older fish or other marine life that swims. The fish smell the chum, and start getting attracted to your boat, where you’re ready with your fishing lines.

I joked that I always thought that chums were another name for friends. Never did I think it was fish food! It turned out to be a very precise example of a sport strategy which can be applied to marketing.

See below how you can learn about successful marketing strategy (my comments in green italics) from effective chumming:

To Chum It Right

Chumming is something every saltwater angler should know to ensure success in today’s heavily pressured fishing areas. A successful day on the water doesn’t go to the angler with the most expensive or fastest boat, nor the one who has all the latest tackle. It goes to the angler who knows how to chum properly.

A successful marketing campaign goes not to the fancy marketing firms who use expensive image-oriented marketing methods or the latest in trends or technology, but to the marketer who knows how to market properly

Knowing how and when to chum is a major factor in the success or failure of a fishing trip. If you’re not a good chummer, the chances are very low that you’ll be a successful fish catcher. There’s lots more to the game than just throwing some baitfish in the water and expecting lots of fish to show up to eat every bait thrown in the water. In real life this seldom happens. Proper chumming on a small sport fisher that holds at most one and a half scoops of bait can beat out a big sport boat that has a bait tank that holds thirty to sixty scoops of bait. The skipper on the big sport boat with thirty scoops of live bait can chum till the cows come home and still not run out of chum or hook bait. This can make the bigger boat more careless about wasting chum.

Same goes with marketing firms. You can spend thousands on marketing and advertising waiting for clients to beat a path to your door, and yet very little will happen.

Knowing how and where to market is the secret to your business success, even by using a cost-effective and clever one-person desktop marketer.

With a small boat with a one to two scoop capacity bait tank, you have to be careful with your live bait. Nothing is worse than finally getting some fish going in the afternoon then discovering all your live bait has been chummed and you have no hook bait left.

And nothing is worse than spending all your valuable money on marketing campaigns without proper step-by-step testing to see what works and what doesn’t with your target market

You’ll need to go to where you know there are likely to be fish. Places like reefs are great places since that is where fish gather. You’ll also have to locate your boat so that you’re upwind (so that the fish smell your bait)

Study your target market by research considering factors such as needs and desires, spending habits, geography, gender, and age. From this you’ll find out who are the most likely and best buyers for your product or service. Only then do you apply your strategies on those target markets to have a high success rate of getting quality clients.

If you do find a reef that is suitable, then you can take a marker that is attached to the boat, and you throw into the water. The market helps you figure out where the water current is going. Once you’ve located yourself properly, you can drop your anchor upwind with adjustments for currents and hopefully you end up about 30 feet in front of the reef.

You should set up your own marketing campaign no differently. Put yourself in a marketing position so that you are in the right place at the right time when clients need you. Use the proper media and advertising messages so that it’s easy for people to find you and remember you.

The next step for you is to start by chumming six to eight chunks a minute and all hands watch the chum stream carefully. Most of the time it takes five to ten minutes for the fish to show up. After fifteen minutes go by with no fish its time to go check out another rock pile or reef. That way you haven’t wasted too much of your chum.

Once you’re set up with your target market and campaign, it’s time to begin testing your market. Try different marketing messages and media and measure the results. Market in small amounts in the beginning to see what is working and what is not. If something doesn’t work, then you can change either the message, the media, or the target market itself. That way you haven’t wasted your marketing dollars.

Usually after five to ten minutes fish will start swimming up the chum slick, feeding on the chunks. Now is the time for live bait!

(Editor’s note: Chum can be made from chunks of fish that is already dead and frozen (but still fresh. Live bait means it’s still alive- you grab it from the bucket filled with water in your boat and cut it up live to be used as bait.)

Once you’ve found a market area that is getting a good response rate to your campaign, you can start increasing the quantity of mailings.

Now go to the next level by throwing one or two live per minute amongst the chunks and have all the fish running after live bait. Hookups are quick and steady, You don’t want to feed the fish lunch, throw just enough chum to keep the fish interested and hanging around and competing for the chummed baits.

When you have clients who responded to your campaign, you know they’re interested in what you have to offer. You can now increase their appetite by giving them more information on your offers, products or services. This can be done in a few ways- by giving testimonials, more technical information, product comparisons, or even biographical sketches of the people who work in your company. You do not need to give everything away, just enough to get your clients feeling that they know you better and are more comfortable with you.

Once the fish get to feeding well and you start catching some of the medium-sized fish, now is the time for “big baits”. You can hook one of these medium-sized fish through the nose and let him go play in the chum slick. Some fish are very smart and very easily scared by fishing lines, so this gets the other fish feeling comfortable where the chum is.

You can use some of your smaller marketing successes to build up to bigger successes, by cleverly using testimonials, references, and especially word of mouth to increase buyer confidence and increasingly build up your client list.

With time, skill and patience you can catch huge fish, sometimes weighing over 100lbs, from this strategy of beginning with throwing chum in the water, and leading the fish to the lures. This is where the angler gets a special thrill when one of these biggies are caught.

Proper marketing build-up like this is a system which can help your business gather more customers with less effort. You can just repeat the system over for new products or in new target markets.

One critical thing that many new fishermen don’t understand is that timing is everything.You have to know your targeted species habits. For example, certain species of fish usually bite until ten thirty am then the bite quickly tapers off and dies by eleven am. You might think to yourself “Why not just continue chumming?” or “Why don’t we move to another reef?” The answer is because if you wait until two pm, that’s when the real fish will start to come out and play again. So you’ll be wasting your chum before then. At ten to two you should start start throwing chum again into the water. By two the fish will be back. If you don’t know the habits of your quarry you could have chummed until the cows came home and wasted all my chum for one or two small unwanted fish. Know the habits of your quarry whatever it is, save your hard charging for the times fish are going bonkers. This way you can make a small amount of chum last a long time, and maximize your catches during the times of plenty!

Timing plays a critical role in the success of your marketing campaign. Some markets go through seasonal swings, other markets increase their buying at certain times of the year, such as holidays. Sometimes you’ll have to approach people during certain stages in their lives, such as when seniors retire from the workforce. At times you’ll have to be patient in order to wait for the right time. But if you prepare your business to sell to the market at the right time and the right place, you’ll make a little money last a long time, and maximize your ROI (Return On Investment) for your business.

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