Around here you will find a blog on lessons from the two earlier Kung Fu Panda movies. And now that we have seen the third, there are some more insights about inbound marketing strategies!
“Oh come on, now you’re taking this too far!”
Probably. But there’s stuff to be said, and the panda and his friends come as the voice for us.
“If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be more than you are!”
Said Shifu to Po.
No one knows this better than us at Niswey. There’s some bit of our culture that induces it. But more than that, it’s the nature of inbound marketing services and the growing need of clients to get more and more specific about reach, engagement and conversion that pushes the inbound marketer of today to new limits, every single day.
If you were simply tracking traffic, bounce rates, and demographics a few months ago, you’re now trying to find new insights by comparing data which the tools are not even directly comparing yet! And then you have a ton of new tools integrated, which you haven’t even figured out how to use creatively so far.
Inbound marketing, like life, can be played within or out of comfort zones. And if you want the product/service you’re marketing to reach its potential, you will have to do more than what you can do. And yes, face humiliation routinely. Know that feeling of having waded through analytics for days on end, and not getting any answers for the question that’s bothering you? And that’s when you are the analytics dude?
“When will you realize the more you take, the less you have!”
Said Oogway to Kai.
Totally the way of inbound, isn’t it? You have to give freely of you, of your knowledge, of things that will help the others. And when the time is right, someone who received, will want to give back too. We just call that conversion. Yeah, we are hell bent on it. But we are more hell (heaven?) bent on giving. More relevant content, more ways to inform, more ways to spread a little more ease to prospects.
What transpires later in the movie, is that Po gives all he has got just so the villain Kai can be taken away from the mortal world. Which is basically, himself. And as he stands (floats, rather) about to lose the war to Kai, he is infused with what he has empowered in each person in his community. They give their best to him.
“I am trying to turn you into you”
Said Shifu to Po.
Another one of the nuggets from Niswey’s culture, I could say. But hey, this is about inbound marketing.
Every business is different, not only because of what they do or how they do it. They are different because they are built by different people, at different times. And so what counts as hot new inbound marketing strategies right now, may not even be right for a specific business. Do what is right for your business. Not because everyone else is doing it, and so you gotta. You do it, because it is right for your clients, for the prospects, and hence for the business. You have got to be you, and you have to keep getting better at being you.
Po finally gets this when his (panda) dad says if Po trained all the pandas, they could also learn Kung Fu and be like the Dragon Warrior. “You don’t have to be me, you have to be you!”
“I knew I wasn’t eating up to my potential!”
Said Po to his panda dad.
Po, the big eater, arrives at the secret village where the panda community lives, and learns that pandas eat a different way, with a different appetite. He has lived all his life, eating big, but only within the realms of his (goose) dad. “I knew I wasn’t eating up to my potential,” he tells his panda dad. While he eats his dumplings with chopsticks one at a time, his little cousins show him how pandas eat dumplings, thereby redefining the ‘stuff your face with food’ phrase, even for Po.
When you are in your true settings, your authentic way of being, you can unleash yourself to be at a whole different level.
Every marketer must find his unique ability (and I suspect this also has to do with Unique Ability®) and operate from there. Not everyone will be a full stack marketer, while that is eminently desirable to keep teams lean. Figure out your superpower that seems to have endless fuel, and put that to super use. The same goes for businesses. Find your niche and dominate there. And that one of the effective inbound marketing strategies to pursue. Find your channels and communities and build traction from there.
“You gotta let the hill tell you how to roll!”
Said panda dad to Po.
Po is delighted to see that his kith and kin don’t walk or run down hills, they roll. He tries it for himself, and gets nicely bashed around on trees and boulders. And that’s when dad tells him to let the hill tell him how to roll.
You don’t look at the hill as an obstacle to cross, an enemy to overcome, a thing to beat. You lean into it and learn the ropes from the obstacle itself. You become one with the problem. Quite like what Bruce Lee said about Yin and Yang in terms of Gung Fu (Kung Fu): “One should be in harmony with, not in rebellion against, the strength and force of the opposition.”
Any problems you face, inbound or not, requires you to lean into the problem, till the problem peaks out and is a part of you. And if you have disciplined yourself enough, you will find the spontaneous way out of that problem. That’s what we are attempting with customer oneness at Niswey. Disciplining yourself means at the very least to keep your mind still, and not be laden with your emotional baggage. Hard work. But you don’t get to be Dragon Warrior without some work and hard knocks.
In the first movie in the series, Po learnt to believe in himself. In the second, he learned to not let his past affect his present and thus find inner peace. In the third edition, he discovers yet another dimension to himself, in his journey to being himself.
In short, it’s a never ending journey, this road to being ‘you’. And all along, you are inbound, if you know what I mean.
All images are screen grabs from the YouTube channel, DreamworksTV.