Good is the Enemy of Best

Most marketing is misconceived. That’s because the things that ‘marketers’ value most are not the same things that provide the most value to businesses.  

For example…  

• Most marketers value more leads – business managers and owners value more new clients.
• Most marketers value ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ – business owners and managers value email addresses of correctly targeted prospects because they know each email address can be monetised and adds income now and in the future.
• Most marketers fall in love with how something looks – business people fall in love with how it works.  
• Most marketers use vanity KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) such as likes, leads and hits as a substitute for real outcomes (such as revenue, profit, lifetime value) and meaningful KPI’s.

It’s also because most marketing is ‘busy work’ – busy and costly, but unproductive or not as productive as it could or should be.  

At best it is campaign based, and at worst it’s going through the motions of doing ‘good’ or exciting things. 

In marketing, good truly is the enemy of the best.

It’s hardly ever the best – the highest performance marketing, the most appropriate for your business and the most profitable.

If ‘good is the enemy of best’, then this ‘good’ busy work could be killing your business. It could be sucking up time, resources, money, effort and energy – with little to show at the end of the day.  

It’s a busy whirlwind of exhibitions, brochures, flyers, social media, a new website, Google Ads, SEO, sending occasional Emails and maybe even Direct Mail campaigns – but usually done with no-cohesive strategy, no single-minded focus on results and outcomes and with very little accountability.  

It’s rarely strategic, and it’s rarely fine-tuned and optimised to produce outstanding results, year after year.  

Even worse, this campaign or tactical approach demands a constant supply of the new – new ideas, new collateral, new campaigns, new stuff.  

Like ‘good’ ideas, ‘new’ ideas can be seductive but corrosive. They steal focus, resources and investment from the ‘best’ marketing that your business deserves.  

In marketing, good truly is the enemy of the best.

And your marketing is often the victim of being pulled in different directions by the latest idea or whim of someone with influence in your business.  

Maybe that person is you?  

If your marketing is working well, really well – you don’t need ‘new’. In fact, new things can be a threat to your highly tuned, well oiled, high performance Marketing Machine.  

If your business is always looking for, or trying something, or doing something new – then that is a huge red flag, it usually means something is wrong. Very wrong.  

Creating a Marketing Machine is different. Very different.

Sure, you will still have a website, and maybe Google Ads, and marketing collateral, and email broadcasts, and possibly some social media activity, and flyers, and brochures, you may still go to exhibitions and events, and maybe you’ll have an automated marketing system of some kind. 

But this time, each is a component in a finely tuned strategic approach to creating marketing that is focused on achieving your business goals and objectives – focused on real business outcomes. 

A strategic approach that gives you marketing systems and in time a Marketing Machine – a highly profitable, predictable, reliable, measurable and accountable way of driving new contacts, new leads, new sales opportunities, higher conversion rates, more sales from clients and at higher values.  

It solves the marketing paradox – that the many, many, many ‘good’ things you can do in marketing are killing your business, because and every pound or every minute spent on something good is keeping you from having the best.