Internet Marketing Lessons From The Dojo

One of the loves of my life is the martial arts.  One of the things that I love about them is that the lessons that you learn in the dojo can many times be translated into other areas of life.  Lessons such as how to respond when confronted, how to overcome ‘disadvantages’, how to maintain balance, and the need to continue educating oneself to maintain success are all things that when applied to other aspects of life outside the dojo, would do you well.

Here are 4 lessons learned in the dojo that you can apply to your Internet marketing:

1. First To Strike Is Not Always the Winner - In any confrontation, you don’t necessarily have to be the one to strike first to win.  If I am attacked, I can fend off that first strike and then bring what I have to the confrontation.  Most likely, my attacker will not know what that is - they will not know my skills, my experience, what intensity I might respond with, and they will be taken off guard.  The same can be said about Internet marketing.  Obviously at this stage in the game, pretty much anything and everything has been marketed online.  Don’t expect to be the first to strike but don’t expect that to be a barrier to your success either.  What you can bring to the table is going to be unique to you - your skills, your experience, and your desire to succeed.  Bring what you’ve got and do it with an intensity that will not allow for failure and you will be able to take the competition off guard.
2. Size Does Not Matter - At 5′4″ it is safe to assume that most opponents I have/will come up against in martial arts will be bigger than me.  (Especially since martial arts is a male dominated activity.)  However, the fact that they are bigger than me does not auotmatically mean that they will win.  Skill level, speed, agility, experience, and strength will all contribute to the outcome.  As with martial arts, size does not always matter in Internet marketing either.  This is especially important for small businesses and in fact in some ways small businesses have an advantage.  They can move faster to make changes, take advantage of new marketing opportunities, make decisions on the fly, and have more direct control over the marketing messages being put out there.  Today’s Internet marketing environment is optimal for small businesses because there are so many opportunities for marketing that are inexpensive and don’t require a lot of in depth advertising/marketing experience.  So use your small business size to your advantage to compete with the big boys.
3. Stay Balanced Or Land On Your Ass - I learned very early on in my martial arts training that without balance you will have no legs to stand on … or to put it more literally you will be on your ass.  Balance is key to taking a punch as well as delivering one.  You must distribute your weight evenly so that it takes more than one small push to take you down.  This same concepts applies to Internet marketing as well and the added benefit is that you can even have more than 2 legs to keep you balanced.  You must distribute your marketing and not just focus all of your energy in one spot.  If you picture each different marketing medium you get into as a leg, then imagine the balance you could attain if you had a leg in PPC, one in social networking, one in the blogosphere, one in article marketing, and maybe even a toe in some banner advertising.  The idea here is that if one ad stops producing that you still have others that are keeping you going…  that if you are working on your brand recognition, you will be seen in multiple places that your target audience visits… that if you are establishing yourself as an expert in your field, your name will be popping up in different forums, articles, blog comment sections and the like.  Give your marketing balance so you are not knocked on your ass because all your weight was on one leg. 
4. “Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.”  ~Chinese Proverb  Learning martial arts is an ongoing process.  There will never be a day when I say, I know everything and can learn no more.  The same is true of Internet marketing and in fact, as the Chinese proverb above points out, when you stop learning about Internet marketing is when you start dropping back.  Internet marketing is not a static thing - it is an ever changing and evolving entity.  What works today may not work tomorrow and if you are not continually learning and educating yourself on what’s happening, you will continue to drop back until you are out of the sightline of your customers.  Continue your education and training in Internet Marketing by reading books, subscribing to blogs, attending conferences and expos, asking questions, and by continuing to row upstream.

Reader Comments

Gina says...June 24th, 2008

Clever write-up! This is definitely useful for me as an internet marketer for a website (Salesconx). I’m going to look back on these anytime I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Thanks for the tips,
-Gina
http://www.salesconx.com

Internet Marketing Solution says...June 24th, 2008

nice Information Post!
stumbled you .. cheers!
Internet Marketing Solution

sidnee says...June 25th, 2008

Great tips, thanks for sharing Brandi!

Recently i’ve stumbled upon a Free eBook and it has helped me to make some money since and i thought you might be interested. You can write a review of it to share with readers if you find it useful

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Best,
Sidnee.

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