Challenge the Conventional Wisdom

The stuff you hear most often isn’t necessarily true, especially when it comes to so-called conventional wisdom. For example, conventional wisdom says that a great product will ensure your success. The truth is – even the best products and services have to be promoted aggressively. Most of our products are not as superior to the competition as we would like to believe. Some of the biggest and most successful companies have mediocre to average products, and some of the outstanding products have been consigned to the dustbin of history, due to poor marketing. Our task as marketers is to make our products stand out from the many choices available to consumers, because while product quality is often a subjective measure, marketing efforts produce either positive results or lousy results.

Conventional wisdom also says that you can guarantee success by following the rules and statistics of marketing. However, things change very quickly in today’s marketplace so you must be careful to ensure the rules you follow are not based on yesterday’s environment. And if there is one thing more dangerous than a rule, it is a statistic. As Mark Twain said, “There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Relying solely on rules and statistics is guaranteed to make your marketing boring, and boring does not sell.

These are just two examples where conventional wisdom should be ignored or challenged. I am sure you can find many more.

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