Perfectly Imperfect Marketing

Two of the biggest marketing-related things that trip many of us up have nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with psychology: perfectionism and procrastination.

Perfectionism is a personal obsession that refuses to accept any standard short of perfection. Somewhere in our brains is an arbitrary definition of what perfect looks like, governed by an ideal that we are striving to achieve. Procrastination is perfectionism’s evil accomplice.

Procrastination is the refusal to start anything unless it meets a perfect standard.

Working together, these two things block marketing implementation more than anything else I’ve seen.

Here’s an example of how these traits might manifest themselves. Imagine you know that to reach a certain prospect audience, a direct mail campaign is an optimal tactic. You budget the resources to create the campaign. In doing so, you begin to formulate a set of rules and criteria that define what you think the “optimal” direct mail campaign should look like and what it should say.

Notice the word “should,” which often is a clue that perfectionism is present. Sadly, the shoulds that support your perfectionist ideal usually are subjective and are not supported by objective data. Emotional factors drive your shoulds more than proven marketing effectiveness does. “What will others think?” becomes more important to you than “Will this deliver a result?”

Even when employing a direct mail expert with extensive experience and proof to support the development of an effective campaign, a perfectionist will get stuck in the minutiae of making the expert change his or her work repeatedly to adhere to that perfect ideal. And that’s when procrastination shows up. In many cases, if the provider can’t meet the perfectionist’s ideal, the project goes to the back burner and never sees the light of day.

To be effective with your marketing, you need to take imperfect risks. You need to be willing to take actions that are not always ideal. You often have to trust an expert who advises you against your subjective predispositions. But, most importantly, you need to realize that a direct mail campaign executed imperfectly is much more effective than the perfect campaign that never arrives in your prospects’ mailboxes.

You don’t have to get it completely right. Just get it most of the way there and then get it going … out the door. Perfectly imperfect marketing!

Tom Adams is a records and information management and information destruction marketing expert. Check out his regular marketing and training tools at TomAdams.com/SDB.