We all like a binge on Friends every so often, it’s shaped the way many people saw young trendy twenty-somethings in the 1990s.
But of all the phrases it’s given us over the years one which sends a shudder of fear through the bodies of marketers is the one Ross utters after cheating on Rachel. Namely, “nobody likes change.”
Unfortunately it remains one of the worst phrases any marketer can hear, let alone say!
Strategies
I’m sure many of you have been there, you’re in a meeting to review marketing strategies, and someone tries to justify doing the same old, same old because “that’s what we’ve always done”, with no understanding of whether it really had an impact.
Actually repeating marketing activity isn’t the worst thing you can do, but repeating it with no understanding of why is almost unforgiveable.
I’m all for running with tried and tested methods, as long as we can prove it works! But simply re-running the same ad, or applying exactly the same strategies time and time again, without analysing the data is just lazy marketing.
We work in a creative industry people, get creative!
There are so many tools (both free and paid for) that can quickly and easily give you insight into the effectiveness of your marketing activities. Online, as you would expect is much easier to track than offline activities – but no matter what tact you take to push your message out…analyse, analyse, analyse!
Failure to analyse
We all make mistakes, no one is perfect.
If we’re honest, sometimes we try things that don’t work. That awesome, creative, out of the box idea we had…flopped. Admitting failure can be a hard pill to swallow, but it’s better to admit failure based on careful analysis than to repeat a strategy that you know doesn’t work.
“Failure is not fatal, but failing to change might be” ~ John Wooden
Discover. Plan. Create. Connect. Measure.
That’s how we work here at Happy HQ. But those five steps aren’t the end of the road, they are the beginning of a cyclical process – with our strategies adapting and changing based on our findings.
John Filmer is an Account Manager and creative thinker at Happy Creative, a strategic marketing and branding agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk
