In Defense of Doing

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

I have worked in digital marketing for 15 years now.

I have worked for startups and enterprises. I have worked for marketing agencies and I have been the only marketer in the company. I have been in tech, in telecommunications, in hospitality…

I’ve seen a lot of business, is what I’m saying. I have seen how marketing, and business generally, get done at many different companies.

On the surface, they’re all doing the same thing.

They’re all investing in the safe channels — in Facebook, in Google Ads, in TV. They’re exploring growth opportunities in new channels. They’re worried about building and following the most efficient possible process to get their websites built, their ad creative designed, and their emails sent.

But how they do those things, that’s where the variety comes in.

You see, some companies have a culture of caution. They’ll often call it “being data-driven” or “smart”. Even the companies with values like “fail fast” can be guilty of this.

It make sense. They have a limited amount of resources. The money coming in feels like it could stop at any time. You can’t afford to fail fast every time, no matter how fast you’re failing and how much you’re learning from each lesson. At some point, it’s just failure.