The #1 thing holding your marketing and advertising back

I’m an adman, so you might expect this to be a rant about how clients need to take more chances and trust their agency or in-house creative teams. That’s a pretty common gripe among us creative types, after all. And truth be told, a lot of great ads do get watered down this way. But that’s not the biggest thing holding it back.

What’s really keeping marketers from their greatest success is the very way they think about marketing. There are debates raging all over the blogosphere about marketing media and disciplines. Above the line advertisers look down on direct response, while the direct marketers dismiss the former for lacking measurable results. It can get heated.

And then there are the debates over channel. One recent LinkedIn discussion asked if email was going to replace postal mail. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about how someone’s favorite media or tactic trumps another.

This mindset is too narrow. It shouldn’t be an either or choice. (tweet this) The fact is that an integrated approach will usually produce the best results. I get that you only have so much of a budget, and you want to use it where you’re seeing the best results. But you may not be seeing the forest through the trees.

Marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

When you get new business that tracks back to a specific ad or campaign, then that ad or campaign is responsible for bringing in those customers, right? Now it’s time to divert budget to more of this and start counting the money.

Not so fast.

That ad or campaign is certainly partially responsible, but the journey from prospect to customer is rarely that simple. All the interactions they had with your brand prior to converting play a part in that decision. Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin illustrates this well in a SlideShare presentation on Why Content Marketing Fails. 

Different marketing disciplines meet different objectives.

This is why those contentious arguments between direct marketers and above the line admen make me shake my head. There’s no need for it. They’re not direct competitors. Above the line is more effective for branding and awareness, while direct is the way to go when you need immediate, measurable sales.

The same can be said for different marketing channels. With some objectives, digital media will provide a better ROI. In other cases, a mailing might be the best way to meet your goal. More often than not, a combination of methods will provide the best results.

To completely dismiss any of the tools at your disposal is foolish. Can you imagine if home builders did that? Would you want to live in a place that excluded plumbing in favor of carpentry? How well would that house be built if they used only hammers? Yet this is how many marketers approach their craft.

Each market, business and product is different.

If you’re in this industry long enough, you see that what works for some, does not work for others. I’ve had concepts and strategies that I was sure would work gangbusters based on past successes, only to have them flop. And I’ve seen others perform way above and beyond similar approaches in other industries.

The takeaway: never assume you have all the answers. Test everything. (tweet this) And consider the big picture.