Monday, December 19, 2011

Something is Better than Perfect

When you dedicate much of your career to a service brand, imperfection is not a word to toss around lightly. You don't beta on customers who have carried your product for 20 years and have come to expect extraordinary relationship care, trust and security. But an amazing thing is happening with customer expectations. In some cases, I can see better sooner, customized, anticipated, fascinated and other factors are changing the mental math. In these cases, something is better than perfect.

It's amazing how liberating that notion is. How many times have you delayed writing an email response to your good friend because you wanted to wait until you had time to write something really special? And in delaying to write it perfectly, you end up insulting them because you didn't send anything for weeks. Then 25% of the letter turns into an apology. The same applies to marketing.

I love the popular notions of Minimal Viable Product and open-source methodology to release early, release often. It's smack dab in the middle of maker's culture and the concept of rapid prototyping. At it's heart, it means stripping away the noise and focusing on the customer need, solving it and learning in real life how to make it better. It doesn't mean fast, cheap and broken. Rather it uses minimalism and disciplined focus to make something better, sooner. It actually is about serving customers. Plus it starts creating momentum. Action begets action.

Tara @MissRogue Hunt, the founder of Buyosphere.com, wrote this so meaningfully. It is 10 lessons learned she is sharing with start up founders. But I believe the ideas here are powerful for marketers at large companies as much or even more so. It is super good.

2 comments:

  1. Pat

    Great blog again. It was so funspiring to read Tara's soliloquoy! Loved it. Maybe we should invite her to come speak to our vivacious bunch at the marketing club!

    Happy holidays!

    - Reshma Khan

    @reshmakhan

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  2. Hmmm...how many times have I delayed in writing an email...or a blog post...in a quest for perfection -- quite a few.

    Here's the delayed version: I really enjoy this blog -- it gets me thinking, and usually gets me smiling, too.

    Here's the one relevant to this post: we have been thinking about how to use "minimalism and disciplined focus to make something better, sooner" (well said!) for our marketing work, too. Particularly in B to B, where most of the conversation happens one on one in conversations/presentations or online (not so public), it seems like there's so much missed time when individual words on a page that will never be shown to anyone (read: internal deck) are agonized over versus letting people try them out -- take them out on the road, so to speak -- and get real feedback from customers on what is compelling and what isn't.

    We've been experimenting with what's the minimum input needed to not be "fast, cheap, and broken", but still get something real out to customers sooner.

    Work in progress...

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