Marketing is like climbing a mountain

Written by Shirley Lichti for The Record, September 20, 2006

During a recent seven-day climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, I realized there are parallels between marketing a product or service and scaling a high altitude peak. Indeed, marketing is like climbing a mountain.

Plan Required
To start with, you must have a plan. It should outline your goals, activities, key dates and timeframes, people responsible for implementing the plan and the budget breakdown.

Although a plan is mandatory, it should not be set in concrete. Mountain climbing and marketing can throw you curveballs occasionally, forcing you to deviate from your plan.

As an example, my husband and I flew to Nairobi from Toronto via London Heathrow. Unfortunately, our bags didn’t make the connection. And within hours of our flight out of London, Heathrow was shut down due to the arrests of 24 suspected terrorists, further delaying our bags.

Fortunately, we had a few days of safari planned in Tanzania to help us acclimatize. While we had only the clothes on our backs, we didn’t need our climbing gear for almost a week.

As the days passed with no sign of our luggage, we formulated a contingency plan - abandon the climb and visit Zanzibar instead. Although it would not satisfy our original goal of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, it would meet our overall goal of having an interesting vacation.

Thankfully, we reconnected with our bags hours before the climb began and so were able to stick to our original plan.

Define Goal
Too many businesses initiate marketing activities with vague motivations or goals. Sometimes they think they “should” because it’s the start of a new year or because their competitors have launched a new ad campaign.

In reality, your chances of achieving a positive outcome increase significantly if you can clearly articulate your goals and objectives, and define how you will measure success.

A well-defined goal helps keep you focused, motivated and on track, especially as marketing complexities mount or, in the case of our climb, as the air got thinner, leaving us breathless and wondering why we embarked on this crazy mission.

Research is Key
Climbing in high altitudes requires thorough research to understand the environment: terrain, weather, distances and elevations to be covered each day.

Research is also essential to plan the right gear and supplies. Our climb started in a tropical rain forest in and ended amid windswept glaciers and temperatures of minus 16 degrees Celsius.

Not everyone who embarked on the climb made it to the summit. Some had trouble sleeping at night because their sleeping bags were not rated for the cold weather we experienced. Others simply didn’t have the right gear or warm enough clothing for the final ascent. A lack of research kept them from reaching their goal.

A lack of research is often the culprit in failed marketing initiatives, too.

Choose a Path
There are eight routes you can take to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. One takes only four days but, with little time for acclimatization, has the lowest rate of success. The route we chose took seven days, which meant more days of grime and more expense. It also offered better odds of reaching the summit.

Most marketing projects can be accomplished using different paths as well. While all may get you to your goal, you need to weigh the pros and cons of each and assess your risk tolerance before choosing.

Build a Good Team
Skilled team members and support staff make things run smoothly and ensure that critical feedback is shared.

A good team also provides invaluable moral support and keeps others motivated when the going gets tough. Remember that your ‘team’ also includes outside partners.

We eventually located our lost luggage in Nairobi, but still needed to have it delivered to Kilimanjaro Airport, eight hours away. This required logistics involving two airlines, our travel agency, safari driver and a local airport authority, with most of the communication conducted in Swahili.

Without everyone working together, our gear could not have arrived in time for us to begin our climb.

Celebrate Success
Celebrate when you reach your goal. But be careful not to get so focused on the end goal that you overlook the value of the journey. Although not all members of our group made it to the summit, everyone had a good experience and learned invaluable lessons along the way.

These lessons will contribute to your success in future initiatives whether they are related to marketing or mountains.

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