All Out Hands
Image Courtesy www.KravMagaTraining.com
If you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I’ve been taking Krav Maga classes for the better part of a year. Krav Maga is a self-defense system that was initially developed in the 1930s to protect Jewish people from growing antisemitism and violence. The founder, Imi Lichtenfeld, eventually became the Chief Instructor of Physical Fitness for the Israeli Defense Force when it was founded in 1948. Krav Maga is now the fighting style of most US law enforcement agencies, as well as police forces and militaries throughout the world.
In class we do a lot of drills and cover a lot of different styles of punches. Straight punches, hooks, uppercuts, elbows, palm strikes, hammer fists – all against a large padded shield that our partner holds. At least once or twice a class, at the end of these drills, our instructor calls out “All Out Hands!” which means that we need to work as hard as we can to try and destroy the shield. Any punch is acceptable, as long as we do it as hard and as fast as possible. Technique matters, but so does speed and force. When we first started our class most people simply punched as hard as they could. Now the people who are really good start with a couple of punches, but quickly add in hammer fists, elbows, palm strikes – varying hits that allow them to increase their effectiveness and deliver such force that their shield holder begins to be pushed backward. In a fight it would be this combination of attacks that would help you defeat your opponent and allow you get to safety.
If you think about it, marketing is a lot like this. We spend our time learning individual tactics – blogging, Twitter, direct mail, etc. But when we have a new client or a new product to launch, we bring together all of these tools to hit the public from all directions. We invoke Twitter for an instant connection to lots of relevant people, blog to help our SEO, and then launch TV or direct mail campaigns. We spend time learning about and researching individual methods of marketing, but we realize the most benefit not from one tactic, but from bringing all of our tools together to overwhelm the public and get them interested in the product or service that we’re working for.
If your business relies on only one type of marketing right now, you are missing out on the real power of marketing. Even adding one more type of marketing to the mix will supercharge your results. But when you are really great at marketing, you will be able to invoke several different methods of reaching potential customers, each of them expertly launched and targeted for optimum results. Your target audience is overwhelmed (in a good way) by the messages that they are receiving, and they purchase. Bam!
Your survival might depend on it.
