Growing up in Durango, CO, was the quintessential experience of small, mountain town living. We would go sledding down our steep driveway, skip school and catch the bus to Purgatory (the local ski resort) and enjoy riding horses, fishing and camping all summer long. The most famous icon of Durango, however, is the impressive Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (D&SNGRR). It’s likely if you’ve ever heard of my hometown, you’ve also heard of this grand steam engine train.
While attending college in Durango, I had the opportunity to intern in the marketing department of the D&SNGRR. It was there, for the first time in my life, my appreciation and love of this unique historical relic rooted itself deep into my heart. Many of the over 2,000 moving parts of the locomotive are custom fabricated and repaired in ‘the Roundhouse,’ which my dad helped rebuild after a fire in 1989. During my time there, I got to see first-hand the magnificence of the coal-fired, steam-powered locomotive.
It was also during my internship I learned a valuable parallel between using steam pressure to power a 254,000-pound locomotive 45 miles up 2,806 feet of elevation gain and direct response marketing. The lesson? You can move anything to action when an effective amount of pressure has been built up and released at the right times.
With a steam-powered locomotive, burning coal heats the water in the boiler creating pressure in the form of steam. The steam travels through piston-fired cylinders on either side of the train powering the driving rods which causes the wheels of the train to move forward. The used steam is released so new steam can be used. Without that release of pressure, the locomotive could explode, just like your mom’s old pressure cooker, without a functioning release valve.
In marketing, we already know people have pressure in their lives. It could be pressure to buy a bigger home for their growing family, provide healthy food and water for their loved ones or perhaps it’s to get rid of pesky hard water stains once and for all. The job of your marketing as a water treatment professional should be to help this pressure build to a productive point and then provide a release that encourages that person to move forward in the desired direction.
While the principle seems simple, effective execution can be complex. Our goal is to break down a few strategic ways you can tweak your digital marketing to become more effective at moving your target audience to action.
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