If It Ain’t Broke… It Will Eventually Break

In marketing, much like in everything in life, things have a certain lifespan. That costly TV ad will grow stale, that innovative campaign will eventually be the norm, and that strategy that once got you so many leads will dry out.

It’s called the 100 Percent Marketing Rule. As Marketing Matters president Coleen Sterns Leith stated in her book Ultra Hi Def Marketing,  5-step Guide To World Domination In The Tech Industry “…nothing works 100 percent of the time. A method may work for a while—until it doesn’t. Think of the most iconic television ads you’ve ever seen. If they are older than 2 years old, it’s most likely not on television anymore. Why? Because, as great as it once was, it stopped being effective…”

So, what can you do to keep your marketing fresh and your audience engaged? Here are a few proven recommendations:

Foster your Team’s Creativity

Working with people who can well up a fountain of ideas to keep the company’s messaging fluid is imperative. Creativity is not something finite that one has – it’s a muscle that needs to be exercised. The more you practice creativity, the easier it becomes to come up with innovative ideas.

Foster your team’s creativity by providing a working environment that sparks curiosity, remaining open to discussing new ideas (even the bad ones!), and by promoting a working culture in which mistakes are not penalized, but learned upon. Taking your team out of their comfort zone once in a while for team building outings and encouraging them to look at things differently will help them flex the creative muscle.

Embrace Change

When it comes to embracing creativity, you can throw the old saying “If it ain’t broke…” right out the window. You know when it’s a good time to start ideating your next campaign? When you launch a new one.

If one thing is constant in marketing, it is change. You will have to change either your strategy, the channels you use, or the creative concept. You need to be receptive to new ideas and know that it doesn’t matter how effective a campaign might have been, you will have to go back to the drawing board at some point and figure out how to achieve the same results with something fresh.

Stay on Top of Analytics

The only way to know when a campaign’s effectiveness is dwindling down is to monitor performance analytics. You should have a dashboard that provides a holistic view of the campaign’s performance (email, website, social and other metrics).

This data is also very useful to identify campaign weaknesses and areas of opportunity. Make sure to use this data to your advantage to create even better campaigns in the future.

The 100 Percent Marketing Rule is a good reminder for marketers to stay on top of their game. Competition is fierce, and marketers need to exercise their creativity to rise above the noise.

For more on the 100 Percent Marketing Rule and Coleen’s five-step process to market a company like an expert, check out her book.