It takes a lot of discipline to be a good marketer. A lot of people think that good marketing just happens – sort of a “big bang” of ideas, without any backstory as to where all that creative matter came from. Count me as one who believes in “intelligent design” as applied to marketing. (For the record, I’m an “intelligent design” adherent when it comes to creation, too. One of my favorite creation jokes is where a bunch of scientists go to God and say, “We can create life – we don’t need you.” God says, “Okay…let’s see.” The scientists reply, “FIrst, we take this dirt…” God interrupts, and says, “Not so fast…use your own dirt.”)

Anyway, a lot of the people I talk with/consult for/deal with have a very, shall we say “organic” view of marketing. Sort of like that cartoon by S. Harris:

Marketing – good marketing, that is – requires a LOT of hard work, planning, and insight into human nature and behaviors. The best marketing only LOOKS easy. Scratch below the surface, and you’ll see a huge amount of effort that went into to the plan – part of which went into to making the plan look easy. 

My dad, a man of great wisdom (and some incredibly corny jokes, I might add), used to tell me, a musical arrangement is like the setting for a jewel. The arrangement shouldn’t overpower the soloist. Like a setting, it should support the jewel, show it off to it’s best advantage, and provide it with protection. 

Marketing is a lot like that. The message – the story – is the thing. Marketing should support that story, and help make the narrative more attractive, more engaging, more riveting. It should never overshadow the message, and it should help shore up any perceived weaknesses in the message, helping make it more bulletproof. 

You don’t get that kind of marketing by accident, happy, unintentional, or otherwise. That kind of marketing requires careful planning, analysis, and forethought. That’s one reason that good marketing costs actual money, while bad marketing seems inexpensive by comparison. I would argue that bad marketing is actually more expensive that good marketing, because the damage it does to your message costs more to fix than the good marketing would have if you’d have gone that route from the get-go. 

So ask yourself, “is my approach to my marketing disciplined, or am I all over the map?” Are you grabbing for every flashy idea that comes along, or are you in it for the long haul? Are you willing to dump your carefully constructed plan for some ‘really cool’ impulse, or are you willing to wait to make your long-range plans come to fruition? And lastly, do you base your marketing plans on a mixture of tried-and-true principles with a helping of innovation thrown in for good measure, or are you relying on fads and whatever the last cool thing was that you saw someone else try?

It takes a lot of discipline to create good marketing, much as it takes a lot of discipline to do things like post to a blog every day. (Believe me, there are days I’m way too busy to blog, and yet, I somehow find the time.) That discipline will pay off, however, because your marketing will always benefit from taking that long, carefully constructed point of view. 

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 10:15 pm and is filed under advertising, marketing.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.