Jon Gruden’s offense teaches us a great way to run marketing campaigns.

He runs a West Coast offense with the Oakland Raiders. It relies on a lot of short yardage plays.

Then, once or twice a quarter, he opens up and calls a big play.

It’s a dink and dunk style.

What I love about this style is that when it works, it’s predictable. You know, with a lot of certainty that things are going to work. It will get the football down the field. It will get you a first down.

Then, with enough of those first downs, you can put points on the board.

This is a perfect framework for how to think about our marketing.

If we’re always investing in huge campaigns, we are setting ourselves up for boom and bust.

They might give us 100% growth or they might give us 0% growth. Nowhere in between.

Instead, if we launch our marketing activities in a dink and dunk fashion, getting 10% growth out of each activity, it only takes 10 of those to hit 100%.

And if only half of them get any growth, we just grew 50%.

Then, if we know we have this foundation of small marketing campaigns running, we might be able to go for the big one. Without the risk of betting all our growth on one thing.

Just like Jon Gruden and the Oakland Raiders.

Let’s just hope his strategy leads to a winning season.