Why Marketers Need To Embrace Failure
Why Marketers Need To Embrace Failure
Marketers tend to do everything they can to never fail.
The marketing plan is the biggest example of this. You research everything, you write it down, you follow the plan, and when the plan inevitably doesn’t produce results, you throw up your hands and say:
It’s not my fault! I followed the plan.
That plan exists purely to cover your ass. You assume everything is going to work out. You don’t build contingencies into that plan.
But that plan doesn’t foster a culture focused on growth.
To get better results, you need to build failure into your plan.
Because here’s the thing: If you don’t fail, you haven’t pushed yourself.
If you don’t give yourself permission to fail, you haven’t given yourself the opportunity to produce 10x results.
And, honestly, it’s not about the failure. It’s about the result of the failure. It’s about the learning.
More now than ever, marketers need to experiment and try new things. You need to try things you’ve never done, and maybe no one else has ever done.
^^^ That’s the cornerstone of competition-free content.
That inevitably means some of your tests will fail. But failure is the greatest learning opportunity.
The goal of failure, then, is to improve on what you’re doing.
This is a concept you’ll learn a lot more about when you read my soon-to-be-released book, The 10x Marketing Formula.
If you want real results, if you want to publish content that actually helps you hit your goals, this is the book for you. The goal behind the book is to help you plan and execute projects that stand out from your competition, essentially making them irrelevant.
Here’s an excerpt from The 10x Marketing Formula that clarifies why embracing failure is a good thing:
We go to school, take notes on the lectures, read the books, and graduate “knowing” how it’s done. Then we land our first job and quickly learn the real, unspoken goal of today’s marketplace: if you fail, ensure it never looks like your fault. So, both RFPs and marketing plans exemplify the problem with the entrenched mindset. And they reinforce an old saying in Silicon Valley: “Nobody ever got fired for picking IBM.”
IBM is big and expensive. It has a strong reputation as an enduring winner. While it’s neither cutting edge nor inexpensive, it’s proven to be an incumbent in the marketplace. So, who would ever get in trouble for picking it? It’s the safe bet, the one you’re supposed to make. Thus, we come to the crux of our problem.
Here’s an example.
Imagine it’s your job to pick winners from losers. Maybe you’re buying stocks or picking a new vendor for a project. Or better yet, let’s say your job is to run marketing that generates 1,000 qualified leads per month for your sales team.
Did a few butterflies just flutter in your stomach at the thought?
If your marketing sucks, you know the long, bony fingers of the CEO will point squarely at you. Problem is, nothing from your textbooks is working. You stare at a blank whiteboard with your job on the line. It’s 1,000 leads per month or you’re canned. So, what are you supposed to do?
Nobody gets fired for picking IBM. It’s the right choice. The safe choice. The one you’re supposed to make. This produces bureaucratic cultures rather than growth-oriented ones. Why, you ask? Because one time someone failed. So, cumbersome processes like marketing plans and RFPs cropped up to make sure no one ever fails again. But the victory is not in avoiding failure. You don’t actually have control over failure — but you do have control over how you respond to it. How you learn from it. And how you use it to catalyze growth by different methods and mediums than your competition.
Did that get you thinking?
If you’d like more information, sign up for exclusive early access to book materials now. You’ll get the first chapter completely free, along with access to The 10x Marketing Formula LinkedIn Group to connect with like-minded content hackers, and you’ll also get updates on book progress (like this blog post).
Do it!
