Still Stuck in Goal-Based Thinking?
A well-kept public secret in my industry is that the marketer is first and foremost a builder of frames.
New marketers initially tend to think of marketing success as the progressive achievement of goals. We accomplish one milestone and look towards the next. We find solace in our graphs. However, as we look deeper at what defines our optimal success scenario, we realize that truthfully that this is the worst way to drive our progress.
If your goal is still to get X amount of views or Y amount of sales, you are missing a massive part of the picture.
The right way is a concept called system. Within your given task, the system is every single social cue as it relates to each other. When you move one pulley and a weight goes up. When you push a lever, a door opens. All systems react much like water, with harmonic ripples spreading throughout.
When you are thinking in terms of completing a marketing milestone, take time to consider the most important aspect of your work. “How does the whole system respond to individual people or symbols?” and “Is there a way to use the natural flow and reactions of the system to my benefit?”
Public opinion is a well, and the only task of a marketing writer is to design a bottle stable enough to hold it. As such, your goals will often become effortless side effects of your system-based actions. The reason for this is simple: Marketing strategy is the understanding of value systems and how to guide them in the right direction.
But I do not take this topic lightly. In fact, I decided to write this article because I have seen companies burn themselves for over $50,000 in content marketing each simply by denying the fact that systems exist. They never lost their goal from their sight - and that was exactly the problem.
They fought me on this issue and said "that's just how we do it." because one of their previous projects was a success, but at the end of the day they were wrong... In fact, their website doesn't even exist anymore! Because of a simple Sunk Cost Fallacy, they kept adding resources to their goal until they had lost everything.
Thankfully if you follow the simple tenets below, you can save yourself a lot of Aspirin and marketing expenses.
Effective Problem Solving for Marketing in 3 Easy Steps:
1 Recognize the sub-groups within your audience and their 'social immune system'.
2 Recognize how local influencers interact with their own followers and other groups.
3 Create a malleable frame that redirects the natural flow of the local system
About the Author: Filip Martinka is a UX copywriter and marketing advisor with over 8 years of experience in software, consumer behavior, and inbound marketing.