“T-minus 9 minutes and holding…” I watched the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis recently with a bittersweet mixture of delight, sadness and surprise. The delight, because, dude… Spaceflight! The sadness, because I was witnessing the end of an historic chapter in space travel. And the surprise because, even after 134 prior launches for the program and 31 for Atlantis, the flight team and ground crew still followed a detailed checklist. They worked from a script throughout the countdown, making sure all the right switches were flipped and all the right steps were followed. Which, when you think about it, seems like a good idea. After all, it’s designed to ensure success in launching 4 human beings plus a couple hundred-thousand pounds of shuttle (give or take), into orbit. And it made me wonder, why is it so few marketers work this way?
“T-minus 5 minutes and counting…”
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Marketing is all about passion, creativity. We can’t follow checklists or processes to do what we do!”
Right. And designing a multi-billion dollar launch vehicle and orbiter that puts people in space–and brings them home safely–requires no creativity at all.
Have you ever watched the film Apollo 13? Those folks prized their mission, cared about their colleagues and were as creative as David Ogilvy and Hugh MacLeod combined. But they recognized the value of a repeatable process. Great improvisational musicians like Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton rely on muscle memory built up through hours of repetitive practice to free their minds and fingers to explore during performance without fear of hitting a sour note. And of knowing how to react if they do. Working from a prepared “script” or checklist allows you room to experiment. What happens if we change the sequence of our campaign launch? Can we drive additional revenue if we…?
The best thing is, you can start with a simple process and add to it as you go. For example, try working from a simple checklist to start:
- Have we set our campaign goals?
- Did we choose a customer segment to target?
- Have we aligned our channels, segments and goals?
- Did we choose keywords our customer segments will search?
And so on.
Process isn’t the enemy. It’s a structure that gives you support when you want to try something new.
“T-minus 1 minute and counting…”
Marketing will always depend on passion and creativity. But the best marketers examine everything they do to find processes that work. What’s your ROI? Can you test a headline, frame a message or create a call-to-action to increase engagement, clicks or conversions? Do you know how much you’re bidding on terms relative to last week, last month, last year? Do you know what you’ve done that’s decreased that cost? If not, could you? What’s stopping you?
“1:00 minute into flight, 10 miles up, 25 miles downrange…”
Launching a campaign is nowhere near as complex as launching a space shuttle. But that’s no reason not to have your procedures down, your checklists ready. Give yourself some tools that will make launching your campaigns faster, cheaper, better. Update the process as you learn from every launch. And remember, don’t make it harder than it needs to be. After all, this isn’t rocket science.
