How to Win At Marketing in 2026?
Hike a ¼ Mile.
If you’ve never been to Yellowstone National Park, there’s something the brochures don’t tell you about. Bison Jams. Traffic caused by bison. Usually, it’s visitors slowing down to take pictures or attempting to feed carrots to the roadside wild animals. Other times, the bison are literally on the road, stopped or slowly meandering to their next destination using the paved path of least resistance.
There’s something that happens when you’re visiting a national park. It’s natural to human nature. You’re driving through, and you notice a group of two, maybe three cars pulled over. The visitors are out of their car, peering into the distance. Some with binoculars. Some with telescopic camera lenses. Okay, you’ve got me. I’m slowing down, rolling down my window, and asking: “Whatchya spottin’?”
“A wolf is teaching its cubs to hunt.”
Okay. Pull over next to that no parking sign and let’s have a look.
You look through binoculars. And for three minutes, you witness the miracle of nature. Wolf cubs clumsily getting their footing. Pouncing. Stalking. Learning.
At the five-minute mark, you pull back from the binoculars and remember that you’re standing on a narrow shoulder of pavement. You also notice you’re no longer the only one illegally parked. There are 27 other cars and 7 RVs doing the same thing you are. Doors slamming. Engines running. All of a sudden, it’s crowded.
This is what happens when you stay roadside. Three minutes of quiet followed by the overwhelming of floodgates.
It takes no time at all. Something cool is happening. You’re early to the party. And in a matter of minutes, the party is overcrowded.
The solution? Hike a quarter mile. That’s once around the track.
A “blue ocean strategy” is about finding places or opportunities that aren’t crowded or competitive.
For example, my wife and I love traveling during the shoulder seasons. Living in Montana, we’re used to seeing places that are usually packed feel empty. Think Glacier in April or Yellowstone in November. It might be colder, but you get the experience almost entirely to yourself.
This weekend was another great example. We found a beach on the Maine coast about 30 minutes from where we were staying. After doing a little digging on Google Earth and reading a few blog posts, we found a trailhead. It was a short walk, about half a mile with a little elevation, and there were only three cars in the parking lot.
Within minutes, we reached the beach at low tide. It was incredible, with a wide open shoreline, small rocky islands, sand dunes, and miles of untouched coast, with barely anyone else around.
The point is simple: instead of going where everyone else goes, look for the less obvious option. That’s where you often find the best experiences
Cue abrupt transition to the business metaphor.
You can easily identify the platforms that are crowded. The equivalent of the sides of the road with 34 vehicles parked, snapping pictures, and scaring away the wolf cubs. I used to book high-quality demos with personalized LinkedIn messages. Those days are gone. Crowded. So I started groups, took over as admin to existing groups, and curated small but valuable conversations. That’s the .25-mile hike. I used to write articles about simple but less talked-about tactics on Google Search and the early days of Instagram ads. Publish. Then get traffic. That slowed as the market became saturated with repeat information. I hiked .25 miles and started writing instead about very specific tactics. Underutilized tacts in overutilized channels. Those gained steam, sent visitors, and led to online leads for our Montana software companies. (RevelForms and GeoFli)
Other examples of the quarter-mile hike: doing what a large percentage of the competition is unwilling, unmotivated, and too unorganized to do:
- Write and contribute to your profession. Put things down on paper. Hit publish.
- Record. Record video. Create a library. Send specific videos to specific verticals. Here’s an example with dentists. Here’s an example with higher ed. Both of these have booked high-quality demos.
- Under-utilized tactics. Straight from Gaberiel Weinberg’s Traction. If you find yourself in a crowded platform, you’ll need to use underutilized tactics to stand out. Warning: these too become the equivalent of the wolf cub on the side of the road, but if you capture the opportunity, they can be lucrative. See Meta Lead Ads. (see a real-life example below)
- In-person sales pitches. Okay, might need to go farther than .25 miles. But maybe not! Either way, in person > Zoom, and most people take the easy way out here.
- Talk to customers. We’ve gotten so used to AI chatbots, talking to your customers is a true differentiator.
Have you hiked a proverbial quarter mile and found solitude, blue oceans, and opportunities? Drop them here, albeit at the risk of opening the flood gates 🙂
