What Brands Can Learn From Team GB’s Olympic Cycling Success

The  British Cycling team were undoubtedly the most successful part of a very successful Team GB performance at the London 2012 Olympics. The mastermind behind this incredible performance was Dave Brailsford, the Performance Director of Team GB Cycling.

Dave Brailsford developed a fascinating strategy which delivered the Team GB Cycling successes. He calls it the “aggregation of marginal gains”.  The aim is to breakdown every single factor that helps determine track success and try to it improve by 1%. The combination of these “marginal improvements” across a spectrum of factors lead to their domination at the Games.

This strategy can be applied to a number of areas outside cycling.  There is an obvious parallel with digital marketing. Still in its infancy in comparison to the more traditional marketing disciplines it can also be reasonably complex, as well as constantly evolving. The vast majority of brands, especially luxury brands, have tremendous potential for improvement across their consumers’ digital journey.  From raising product/service awareness to optimising ecommerce potential to creating a lifelong brand fan.

The beauty of digital marketing is that it can be constantly optimised through a thorough and on-going testing programme. By adopting Brailsford’s strategy you could aim to improve your results by at least 1% across all your digital activity from search (paid and natural), email marketing, online advertising, social media engagement, effectiveness of your website to affiliate programmes.

For example, why not test what copy lines work best on your email newsletter or PPC campaigns with simple A/B testing? Given that mobile internet consumption will soon overtake desktop consumption, ensure that your website works on mobile devices. Drive social media engagement by more effective use of creative and dynamic video.

There are a host of activities that could help marginally improve how you communicate and engage with your consumers digitally. If you want to win that gold, you better start now.