Marketing is like a game of poker

[littlenicky]

Though I don't play often, I do appreciate a good game of poker.
To me, it makes a pretty good analogy for marketing, and business.

It's like when you play poker, you know what you have in hand, and you'll spend time to analyze what everyone else is trying to do. Then, you make educated guesses as to what cards they have. You'll hoard your resources until you know you're going to win. THen you confidently give everything you've got and win it all in that particular hand.
Winner takes all, losers lose everything. Others pick up a little here and there and manage to stay in the game.

Imagine you're in business, you'll keep your strategies at bay, observe your competitors, and when the time is right, you launch your campaign or promotion or anything, and grab the market for that period of time. See what I mean?

Marketing, is just like a game of Poker.
You win some, you lose some.

I wish I could tell my boss this "lose some" concept whenever we "lose" lol

[llfwjr]

To some extent, your poker metaphor works - you do have to analyze your competition.

But marketing - and business in general - is not a zero-sum game like poker is. In poker, one player ends up with everything. In business, that's just impossible. Even if a business dominates a market segment, they can never control all of it. Even seemingly unassailable competitors like Microsoft's Office suite prove to be vulnerable to software like OpenOffice.

In business, there is room for everyone to win. You just have to find your niche.