PERFECTION…Let it go, it doesn’t exist!

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March 12, 2012 by alextalksdirect

Things go wrong in businesses, Marketing is no exception.

As business owners/marketers we are always striving for the perfect advert, the perfect copy written case study, the perfect press release, the perfect website…damn the perfect blog…let me tell you, It does not exist..I have looked for it, strived for it, been told to find it by a previous Managing Director and still no holy grail!!!

Why is this? Why do we strive for perfection but never seem to get it quite right? There’s always someone who doesn’t like it or has a negative comment to make and that’s fine,  because Marketing, like everything else is all about perception.  How one see’s the world (in this case ‘the business’) affects how you view the marketing activity.

The biggest faux pas an organisation can make is to base all of its marketing activity on what the people within the organisation think of it….Yes that’s right,  who cares what the Managing Director thinks of the latest blog post or social media strategy or prime time ad on ITV for that matter?  That’s their perception.

The Managing Directors understanding of the business is often more in depth, more high brow and generally more detailed than that of the ‘lay customer’.  And for this reason the fact that the MD doesn’t like the ad is probably a good thing, because if they do its too detailed, too corporate, too internal…all the things a good piece of marketing communications (unless it’s  INTERNAL marketing comms of course) should not be!

Customers must engage with the communications, like the communications and continue to do more of the behaviour that you are asking of them i.e click, ring, like, connect, log on, go in store…you get the drift. A customers positive response to your communications should be how external marketing communications are measured….

The key to all of this is that no marketing campaign should ever be perfect, marketing should be done, measured, evaluated and adapted in a continuous cycle.  It’s the measurement and evaluation that allows the marketer to understand the customer in more depth….

Do you ask your customers what they think of your marketing communications? Do you ask your customers what they think of your business?

Or are you guilty of going with what everyone in the office wants??????