The Myth of Marketing Best Practices 2024

There is a ton of content available to you on marketing. How it works, how to be successful, how to be effective, what not to do. And as a business leader, I really hope you’re investing some time to stay up to date and to get smarter and be a better leader of your business’ marketing, because it’s a really critical part of your success. But I wanna caution you to avoid a temptation to be out there looking for the right thing to do. That there’s some perfect marketing that if you adopt that recipe your business will be successful. I wanna share with you three reasons it’s not that way, and how you can think about it differently so that you are able to get the most from all that marketing content that’s out there in the world for you. 

SWTEIM
You need to start with the end in mind with your marketing. You have to know where you’re going before you decide on what to do and, and what’s right for your business. It’s really critical to be specific, to have a crystal clear understanding of why your business exists, who it is that you help, and how they understand that value that you provide. And from there, it gives you clarity that you can figure out what the right strategy or best practices to be successful in your venture.

You’re a snowflake
Your business is different than every other business on the planet. If it’s not, you have a prob bigger problem than best practices because you are a commodity. And because that’s true there’s not one way to make your business successful in marketing. You need to understand your particular target, your particular size, the competition in your market, your audience, what they need, where they need to hear it, what they want to be satisfied, all those different things. In addition to that, how is your team when it comes to marketing? Are you PhD level or are you just starting out in primary school or somewhere in between? All of those factors play a role in what’s the right best practice for your business.

Finish
And then finally, avoid the temptation to do all the right things that you read about. Because what happens if you’re sucked into that, you end up with a longer list than you can effectively deliver. I believe the best marketing, is marketing that makes hard choices, says no to a lot of options for things you could do. And with those few things that you choose to do, you do them really well. You dedicate yourself and your team to completing that tactic, that program, that campaign. And you follow it through, adapt as you go and learn from it. But finish strong. So many businesses end up with a strategy of the month or a best practice of the year, and they rarely get finished in that case.

So yes, best practices are wonderful education and ideas. The important thing is how you apply them to your business so that they don’t distract you from the real world you live in and the real results that you can achieve with marketing.