With roots deep in South Alabama, I write this with all love. Plus, I’ve had my fingers plum covered in worm guts and have been elbow-deep in a catfish, so I guess I got rights.

There’s a lesson we can learn from a true angler. I’m not talking the professional kind with sponsorship money and all the free time in the world to fish. I’m talking about Joe, the patient local who knows the place to fish today.

See, all things being equal, Joe’s a true marketer.

• Joe clearly knows his target market.
  He knows the fish he loves to catch and he knows everything about their eating, resting, mating, and congregating habits. Those are the details that help him catch more fish. Today it’s brim (or bream, or crappie, depending upon where you’re from—those tasty little morsels of fried-incredibleness).
• Joe knows what the fish are looking for.
  Crickets! Brim love little, active crickets—not nasty, plastic, glowing worms.
• He knows where to find them.
  Brim love warmer water, not too deep, near the shore. Put little, if any, weight on the line so the bait stays closer to the top. They like to come toward the surface and surprise-attack!
• He knows the right way to connect with them when they do engage. 
  Don’t jerk the line too hard. Let ‘em nibble, nibble…patient…then, just when you feel they are taking the bait, pull. Not too hard, or you’ll lose ‘em; not too soft, or you’ll lose ‘em.

Joe also knows that fish move around. Even though he caught a mess of brim today in that perfectly quiet spot, under the shade tree, near shore, next week the fish may not be there. They will still love crickets, and they will be in warm, shallow water, but he’ll have to look in a different spot.

Marketing is just as fluid. It’s part art and part science, and as in fishing, success comes from knowing your market and patiently finding the best place(s) to connect with them.

If Joe just showed up like a tourist with a cane pole and a plastic worm floating near the surface in the middle of the lake, he wouldn’t catch one fish. You won’t catch a brim in cold, deep water. Your target market might not be very active on Facebook.

So, go and market like a redneck! Study your market to truly understand what they are looking for, where to reach them, and what message to use when you do connect with them. They may move from place to place, but once you understand their core needs, marketing will become less of a mystery and more about catchin’ a mess of fish.