Today I was thinking about how most people treat marketing and PR. And my reaction is most treat it as this immutable thing that is more static and final than it should be. What I mean by this is they think it is imperative to construct a perfect, finished product and then, eventually, ship it. As if it has to be flawless first.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s absurd. You can shape copy forever. You can\u00a0overthink\u00a0each bit of content. You can apply silly, self-imposed rules or brand guidelines. Guess who cares? You, and not a single other person. Not one.<\/p>\n
Campaign thinking is wrong <\/p>\n Campaign is a word that really bothers me because it is just not accurate to describe effective\u00a0modern marketing. The term really needs to go away because it perpetuates a notion that you spend all this time to once in awhile release something static. If you\u2019re doing that, of course you\u2019re way\u00a0behind competitors\u00a0in organic marketing.<\/p>\n Campaign thinking is from an era it was expensive to share information with your customers. It used to make sense to be perfect because you were always in a position you had to rent the channels of others. And if you\u2019re still in that mindset you\u2019re thinking small. It is more scalable and provides far greater returns to\u00a0become media yourself.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t try to predict success,\u00a0get iterative<\/strong><\/p>\n Back when campaigns ruled, it was expensive to fail. That\u2019s no longer the world we live in, if you\u2019re structured in the right way it\u2019s\u00a0cheap to fail. Not in your strategy but in the tactics you execute daily. At first, some will be successful, some not so much, but use data to improve bit by bit and improvise as you go.<\/p>\n Stop being afraid to mess up<\/strong><\/p>\n If you get agile with your marketing you are going to be imperfect. Guess what? Human beings are imperfect and that\u2019s what we connect with on the web: other humans. The company willing to make a mistake and then go with it is going to win against the ones afraid of their own shadow. There will be mistakes. The old guard of marketing would flip out with this notion, of realizing a mistake in the name of agility is fine. But it\u2019s exactly what you need to do.<\/p>\n If you mess up, fix it and move on. Don\u2019t let it stop you from shipping. I\u2019ve thought about this (and tested it!) and people always prefer ideas that have personality\u00a0first<\/em>\u00a0and are perfect\u00a0last.\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s not about being perfect, it\u2019s about actually caring and putting emotion into what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n Improvisation means no more marketing drones<\/strong><\/p>\n In the future we won\u2019t need marketing drones anymore. Cranking out boilerplate copy or executing templated campaigns is a thing of the past. This means that if you\u2019re not willing to improvise and think on your toes you aren\u2019t cut out for marketing any longer.<\/p>\n Modern marketing is about an\u00a0ongoing, unfolding story\u00a0you tell bit by bit every day. It\u2019s about thinking\u00a0beyond Facebook and Twitter\u00a0and defining an effective mix of creative tactics you can build upon that accrues equity. You need to be part analyst and\u00a0data-driven, but also have enough\u00a0confidence to lead.<\/p>\n Improvisation only occurs when you\u2019re fluent<\/strong><\/p>\n Imagine a talented musician performing with their group. The best moments aren\u2019t the parts they have prepared beforehand. They are the parts where the musician tries new things and pushes the envelope. But only talented musicians are able to do this and achieve a beautiful, improvisational tangent. That\u2019s what your marketing team should look like: smart, talented, unafraid to\u00a0break rules, try new things and improvise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I was thinking about how most people treat marketing and PR. And my reaction is most treat it as … <\/p>\n
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