The Winners Win

The #1 Rule of Marketing & Business

I’ve learned the hard way that a big part of success is to let things be simple.

Thankfully, so much of business growth really comes down to one dead-simple rule that for some reason is consistently overlooked or underleveraged, even by very sophisticated teams.

This very simple first principle is as reliable as the law of gravity — and you can take it to the bank again and again:

The winners win … and they win, and they win, and they win.

Another way of saying this, that I say constantly on repeat to my team at Chief Detective, is to strengthen strengths. When you're trying to figure out what to do to grow a business, start by strengthening strengths. What's already working? What are the pockets of demand in your business already? Pour water on those. It's going to be so much easier and so much less risky to try to quadruple something that's already working versus going off and finding something new.

Why? Because of the Pareto Principle, which is the 80/20 rule: things cluster. In product businesses, sales cluster around products, for example. So if I'm running a t-shirt website and I've got 10 shirts on my site and earned $100 in revenue yesterday, well, it's extremely unlikely that I sold one of each of those shirts (i.e., that customers came in and each bought a different shirt). That's extremely unlikely. What's far more likely is that 2 or 3 of those shirts are the hits. And I sold a bunch of those few styles. And that basically is true across businesses, whether it's a $1,000/month t-shirt website or a $1 billion global company.

Sales cluster. And the clustering principle isn't just true with product sales — it’s typically true with any winning element of your business at all.

“Winners win” is also true with creative. If images of a sleeve rolled up around an elbow tend to perform well in your ads, well, guess what? Those types of shots are probably always going to work. This is also true with copywriting and messaging angles. Your top winning headline of all time might literally always work, forever, and instead of trying to beat this angle you should just set about finding new ways to say it and show it over and over and over again into infinity.

Any winning element of your business should be seen as a great gift. It's a clue of what to do more of.

Let me give you a couple of examples of how building on winners tends to lead to deep reservoirs of easy money.

With apparel, beauty or other product-based companies, like in our t-shirt company above, the sales are going to cluster around certain of those products, and those are called hero products. And when that happens, it just makes your life so easy, because all you have to do is maximize the value of those heroes to the point where they each become a business in their own right.

So if you think about Nike Dunks, for example, somebody's job over at Nike is to manage the franchise or the business of Nike dunks. That's a whole business in its own right. They do seasonal versions. They do high tops, they do low tops, they do collabs. Somebody is sitting there maximizing the value of that as a franchise business within the overall business. And that's what you want to do. You want to find your hero products and then grow the hell out of those things, with your original hit product as your seedling.

The idea is to feed the beast around this hero product. A cool fact of hero products is that customers collect them. When somebody’s first purchase includes, for example with Jenni Kayne, the Cashmere Cocoon Cardigan Sweater, well, guess what? Their second purchase will very likely also include the Cashmere Cocoon Cardigan Sweater — in a different color. And guess what the third purchase likely also includes? Yep, another Cocoon Cardigan Sweater — maybe the cotton or bouclé one this time! Customers collect heroes — give them things to collect, it’s taking money right to the bank.

The easiest thing in the world to sell someone is something that they've already bought. When they buy something, they're telling you, I want that. And so your job as a company is to build on that paved demand track. You're feeding the demand so that they can repeat purchase.

So that’s apparel — easy. Now let's say for example, you're a beauty or wellness company. Skincare or vitamins, something like that. This is a case where you're probably not going to come out with a different color to feed the repeat demand track. However, there are other elements of the success that you could “franchise” off of. Typically products like these are solving a problem or achieving a goal. You could extend a product line around the core problem or goal. Neck wrinkles, for example. Do a whole suite of products around neck wrinkles. Or sometimes it’s an innovation or a key ingredient that could be franchised. Or speed of result. Take the key benefit or ingredient and build a product line on that.

And then also of course, for the OG product, focus on driving the subscription. Maximize that subscription uptake as much as possible so you can stop paying for repeat purchases. If somebody gets to their second purchase on a product like that, they're giving you an extremely strong signal that they like that thing. It’s filling a need for them. So that's a whole repeat demand track that you should really be hitting with a hammer.

In general — you want your EARS UP, acting with great self-awareness around what are the grooved demand tracks of the business. And then build core, always-on strategy pillars around maximizing the hell out of those grooved demand tracks. Low-risk initiatives with big potential payouts. Money in the bank.

Here's another good example. Let’s say you’re in the hospitality industry and you’re marketing a hotel. You might find that 100% of the time when you're doing Instagram advertising for your hotel, it's going to be one of the following two images that drives the ads: 1) an attractive woman sitting on a balcony or in a jacuzzi holding a glass of wine; 2) cool aspirational shots of the most awesome suite in the whole hotel, the most expensive VIP suite. That’s not the room that people are going to buy, but it's what gets them to the site. It's the window dressing that gets them in. If you find that to be true, why would you go do more photography of the lobby or of the front entrance?

The winners win, and they win, and they win. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If you find a winning element of your business, do more of that, in whatever form that might take.

I could go on with examples forever. And I know that this first principle might seem obvious, but it took me years to actually understand this. I wasted so much investment capital and time trying to come up with some big new creative idea instead of just pouring water on what was already working and trying to maximize that. You see this even with really mature brands and smart, experienced people.

There's just, for some reason, a tendency to overlook the value and the ongoing upward potential of something that's already working. In fact, a lot of times it's actually seen as a problem. Instead of seeing the monotony of winners as a problem, maybe you see it as a gift. A gift of making your busy FORMULAIC AND EASY. What's wrong with that?!

Maybe you can relate to this. For a long time I had sort of a psychological complex in building businesses where things had to be hard or unique, or maybe I just like a puzzle to get my hands around or whatever else.

But that's not successful thinking. In fact I think that's very unsuccessful thinking.

Successful thinking is paying attention — being very alert to what's working, and accepting the fact patterns of consumer demand. Recognizing the organic demand tracks of your business and building on those.

I really, really encourage you NOT to try to outsmart the fact patterns and the demand patterns of your business — but to invest in them. You're going to be so good at driving revenue. It's a magic trick, just pour water on what's working.

And by the way, this is the same in life. I really believe that success falls into your hands when you build on what you're good at and when you build on your gifts. And it's really the same principle. Too much for today, but some other time we'll talk about how to exploit this same principle to be magically successful in your life and in your career.

And that’s a wrap. The Big Daddy first principle of building businesses. Obvious, but underestimated and overlooked by businesses of all kinds, every single day of the week.

The winners win, and they win, and they win, and they win.

Aka … Strengthen Strengths.

Aka … Follow the clear demand tracks and consumer fact patterns of your business.

Take the positive demand signals of your business all the way to the bank — it’s easy!

And as always, good luck!
Emily