Enjoyment > Effectiveness
--> for marketing (and most things)
I’m a big fan of the work of Michelle Segar.
She’s a researcher in the field of exercise and healthy eating, and her central thesis is that we spend:
Far too much time trying to figure out the “perfect” diet or exercise plan - but then never sticking to it because it’s way too difficult
Far too little time trying to find a plan that we enjoy and can stick to and that fits with the rest of our life, even if it’s not theoretically the best one for us
It’s the same with marketing, of course.
We all have different skills and experiences. Different amounts of time available.
Some of us have staff who can do marketing for us, or we can afford to outsource it. Some of us hate being “pushy’ - others don’t see the same activities as pushy at all. Some of us hate networking but love writing. For many it’s reversed.
Yet when it comes to marketing our first question is always some variant of “what’s the best approach?”
We ask experts. We look at what competitors are doing. We read newsletters that tell us that you can get a 173% ROI from Tiktok ads or AI generated videos or advertising in people’s dreams.
But really what we should be asking is not “what works best” in an absolute sense, but “what’s going to work best for me?”
Behaviour Scientist Jason Hreha suggests looking at 4 criteria when trying to figure out what to do to achieve a goal:
Effective: How effectively would this activity/behaviour get me to my goal?
Easy: How easy is it for me to do this activity/behaviour?
Exciting: How excited am I by this activity/behaviour?
Enjoyable: How enjoyable/pleasurable do I find this activity/behaviour?
There’s one criteria about the “goodness” of the activity and 3 about whether it’s going to work for you.
And I reckon that’s about right.
Of course, you have to choose a method that works. No point in doing marketing you enjoy if it never gets you any results.
But in the real world, there are lots of marketing options that work. You have plenty of choices.
Some options are better than others. But as long as the methods you’re looking at work, the most important factors are the same as with exercise and diet: whether you’ll enjoy them and find them easy.
Spend your time figuring that out, not one whether method A you’ll never be able to implement is theoretically better than method B.
That applies to my work too.
I firmly believe that an email newsletter is one of the most effective methods of marketing available, and it’s one of the easiest for most people to sustain.
But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect for you.
You have to try things out. Stick at them for a bit because nothing is easy initially.
But I’ve generally found that if I try something for a couple of weeks and still hate it, I’m never going to love it.
And while you might not need to love everything you do in marketing, if you don’t at least like it a bit, you’re never going to do it.
Ian
PS - if you do think an email newsletter could work for you and might be something you enjoy, this is the best place to start.