When Swimmer Michael Phelps won the sixth race at the recent Olympic games in Beijing, it was by a hundredth of a second. But my question is, what was the name of the swimmer in second place?

If you have no idea, don’t feel bad – because I’m certain that 99% of the population could not answer that question.  (It was Miloard Cavic)

But my point is this.  The loser didn’t lose by much.  The winner didn’t win by much.  In point of fact, the loser in this instance was just a microsecond away from being the winner.

In any event, the coach of the loser certainly didn’t throw him off the team.  He just went back to the drawing board and worked on ways to shave that hundredth of a second off the final score.

Now let’s apply these same facts to the world of marketing. In 100% of the cases a marketing tactic either works or it doesn’t work.  And the way most clients judge the outcome is by seeing if the tactic makes money or loses money.  But there’s more here than meets the eye. The truth is the transaction – win or lose – didn’t do either in totality.  If it was a winner, it may have been a winner by only a few hundred dollars.  Or if it was loser, it may have been a loser by only a few hundred dollars.

But most people judge the tactic in totality.  It was either a winner or it was a loser.  And looking at tactics this way is absurd.

What if instead, we looked at only the difference.  What if instead of winning or losing, we were more concerned with managing that part of the transaction that made the difference.  Now instead of proclaiming victory or accepting defeat – we simply get to work making up the difference.   I like to call this “Managing the Middle” because it’s usually only five or ten percentage points here or there that determine the success or failure of any marketing tactic.

Here’s an example of what I mean.  I recently did a post card mailing for a client that failed to return a profit.  The client was despondent.  For him, it was just one reason to abandon marketing all together.  But a closer look revealed that the mailing only missed the profitability mark by three hundred and fifty dollars.  I convinced him that instead of going on to the next tactic (and the next), that we make the necessary adjustments and run the campaign again.

What did I do? I concentrated on ways to take the $350 out of the equation.  What this boiled down to was finding a printer who printed postcards for less, and having his staff do the mailing instead of depending on an expensive outside automation process.  Sure enough, the next mailing made a nice profit.  And now this particular client looks at postcard mailings as something that “works”.

And what about you?  Look over your last few marketing tactics and pay close attention to the “middle”.  What you’re likely to find is a bunch of “losers” that can be turned into winners.  And a bunch of winners that can be made into super stars.  Meanwhile, you develop a whole new mindset that doesn’t see everything in terms of black or white.