California is known for a few extraordinary things, In-N-Out, dreamy weather and the Oakland A’s.

In 2002, the game was afoot for the Oakland A’s. They had a great preseason with the famous Mark Mcgwire and Poswago. The dynamic duo were home run hitting sluggers. Their winning streak was 30 and 0.

With these results, you might assume they were a wealthy team with lots of fans. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Their financial status was in bad shape, often playing at home in a half-empty stadium. And with a payroll that is less than a third of the Yankees’, the A’s seem to contradict the argument of baseball owners who insist that a tax on high payrolls and increased revenue sharing are necessary to establish competitive balance.

So how’d they get these results?

The team’s general manager Billy Beane was largely responsible for their success using proactive marketing to create a formula for unconventional methods of scouting.

Specifically, Bill applied research and analysis to a game traditionally conceived as a business of intangibles and observation. Making their objective to find players that, in terms of dollars, were undervalued in the market they took to statistics.

Beane’s philosophy corresponded to what was undervalued in baseball at the time; it was getting guys who took lots of pitches.  This would have a two-pronged effect: wearing down starting pitchers by racking up pitch counts, which would then exploit every team’s Achilles’ heel: the bullpen.

The A’s placed a premium on a player’s on-base-percentage (OBP), as opposed to batting average (BA), which was the traditional statistic used to gauge—and distinguish between—a player’s ability and their value, one that the A’s saw as being outdated.

In other words, the catch was this: A better hitter with, say, a .300 BA might not help you win as many games as an average hitter who batted .260 but walked 120 times, especially because a .300 hitter costs you a great deal more.

Beane’s mandate was to keep payroll under a certain number, so he had major incentives to normalize player data and make bets on the margins where other teams’ scouting lenses would overlook what turned out to be under-valued metrics, such as walks — which is why he called Kevin Youkilis “The Greek God of Walks.”

Beane was hailed as a genius and a revolutionary. Building baseball teams that outperformed other clubs despite maintaining a fraction of their payroll.  

All thanks to proactive marketing.

Predictive analytics to identify the best players, compile a roster and assemble the best team. The results of this strategy? A 20-game winning streak. Scouting transformed from a guessing game to calculated analysis, through strategic data analysis. And by 2004, every baseball team was using proactive marketing. So why aren’t you?

Finding strategies to fit the unique nature of marketing can seem like an impossible task. So what proactive strategies can be applied across the board?

• Think in the long term. Similar to how the Oakland A’s were able to use predictive analytics to create a better roster, what strengths do you predict your campaign will need to be successful? What are the goals of the campaign? Think about how your infrastructure will respond as this goal becomes a reality.

 

• What are some foreseeable problems that you can take preemptive action on today? Is your website easy to navigate and apt to handle mass traffic? Any preemptive planning before launching campaigns will return ten times on investment. Run tests, and have focus groups, so when you launch a campaign it isn’t a guessing game but a strategic plan. Having the foresight to think in the long term is hard, but has greater payoff than finding short-term solutions.

 

• Weekly or monthly accountability meetings are key for any goals. Assess how effectively you are getting to this long-term goal and what you can do to accelerate it. If the direction of the long-term goal changes having a meeting will keep clarity and efficiency high.

 

• Analyze. The most powerful data is the data in hand. Research is key to optimizing campaign results. What is the objective of the campaign? Analyze your competition-what strategies do they use to reach their audience effectively? A focus group was put together to find what tech users were looking for in social networks. They first asked the users what they found dissatisfying about Facebook as a platform. They discovered that the number one complaint was that the news feed was too cluttered and difficult to keep up with. Using this feedback, they came up with the idea behind Twitter – a streamlined platform for people to share articles, entertainment, news and opinions. When you analyze and find ways your product can provide value in a way no other product does, you begin to see the benefits of proactive marketing.

 

• Personalization. Acquiring customers is difficult and expensive, and if you’re not proactively engaging them, business will dissipate. Nothing is more proactive than anticipating the needs of an individual customer. By anticipating what customers want, how best to reach them, and through what channels they’re seeking information, a business can be more effective in gaining and retaining them. Moreover, those companies set themselves apart from competitors who aren’t doing their research and thus cannot foresee present (and future) needs. The more pampered and specific your personalization is the more business you will generate.

Proactive marketing will minimize campaign failure, stretch your marketing budget farther,  identify and engage the target audience more efficiently, build and maintain strong brand awareness and loyalty, improve competitive positioning, spot and address gaps in your data collection, react nimbly to change and innovations

 

Work smart, not hard, use proactive marketing.