There’s No Room for Perfectionism in Marketing and Here’s Why
I talk a lot about perfectionism. Whether I’m talking about my own journey to embrace my humanity or helping other women of color overcome perfectionism through my brand, Human Over Perfect.
But it wasn’t until recently that I considered the role perfectionism plays in marketing, an area in which I’ve worked for the last decade. A recent LinkedIn post by Amrita Mathur, VP of Marketing at ClickUp, inspired me to reflect on the ways perfectionism can inhibit marketing success and how leaders can discourage perfectionistic habits on their teams.
The overarching theme of her LinkedIn post was experimentation. This line is forever etched in my mind: “Marketing is basically a series of well-connected experiments.”
Perfection is the antithesis of experimentation. Experimentation is the process of trying out new ideas, strategies, and activities. You initiate an experiment expecting to make some mistakes, but the goal is to ultimately learn from said mistakes and apply them to your next experiment.
A tangible example of this is from my time as a Marketing Content Coordinator at Advance Auto Parts. I often ran social ad campaigns, and our main KPI was the return on ad spend (ROAS). To ensure we were continuously optimizing our ad spend to reach our goal, I’d run A/B tests.
Depending on the campaign, I’d experiment with different audiences, messaging, and creative. And often, mid-campaign, I’d adjust our strategy to maximize our ROAS. At the end of each campaign, I’d review the data, extract what worked (and make note of what didn’t), and apply it to the next one.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s important to remember that even with a good strategy in place, you’ll most likely conclude every experiment (read: social media campaign, partnership, or product launch) with a few adjustments or iterations in mind.
There is no perfect formula, strategy, or approach in marketing. Yes, there are industry guidelines, standards, and best practices available to help guide our experiments and better inform our hypotheses. But when it comes to marketing your product or service, as Amrita plainly put it,
“There is no playbook, bruh.”
So we must commit to ongoing experimentation and let go of long-held ways of doing things that penalize mistakes, discourage risk-taking, and inhibit creativity and innovation.
Prioritizing Continuous Improvement Over Perfection in Marketing
While marketers may struggle with perfectionism on an individual level, the onus isn’t entirely on them. Many organizations aim (or simply claim) to have a culture of experimentation. But too often, marketers are constrained by leaders and middle managers who actually encourage perfection.
You’ll likely never hear managers utter the words, “Everything must be perfect!” But it’s often implied in their language and how they respond to mistakes or missed KPIs.
Are they quick to shut down and criticize new ideas?
Do they point fingers and place blame when something goes wrong?
Do they micromanage projects and expect you to always do things their way?
This type of environment stifles creativity and innovation. And in a field like marketing — where technology, buying trends, and market conditions are constantly changing — having people who are empowered to take risks and think outside the box is how organizations win.
So, how can you foster a culture of experimentation in your marketing team? It starts with psychological safety.
David Finkel, the co-author of Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back, shared this in a recent article for Inc.com:
At its core, psychological safety in the workplace gives your employees permission to take a chance. It answers the questions:
- “What happens if I make a mistake and something goes wrong here in my company?”
- “Can I make a human mistake and be given the space to learn from that, or am I going to suffer some negative penalty?”
- “Are my boss or co-workers going to yell, stare, or think poorly of me or treat me differently?”
- “Or might it even jeopardize my job, my role, and my opportunities in the future?”
So, how can marketing leaders foster psychological safety to discourage perfectionistic behaviors?
- Encourage continuous improvement
As I mentioned before, marketing is in a constant state of flux. To stay ahead of the competition and on top of new trends, we must be lifelong students.
Marketers: Devote time each day or week to learning a new skill (or brushing up on an existing skill), keeping track of the latest trends, or networking with fellow marketers.
Leaders and managers: Encourage continuous learning and development. Inform your team members of any educational benefits offered by the company. Maybe even suggest blocking time on their calendars each week for professional development. And like my last manager, you can even make professional development a quarterly KPI, which allowed us to make learning and development a priority.
You can also implement retrospectives to analyze the effectiveness of a strategy or process following a campaign or project to identify areas for improvement and optimization. Holding regular retrospectives gets your team in the habit of examining their work, documenting best practices, and brainstorming ways to improve.
There are a number of ways to structure a retrospective (and endless resources available to teach you how). But the general goal is to answer three questions:
- What went well?
- What went poorly?
- What can we improve?
2. “Don’t place blame, look for solutions.”
This is a quote from Finkel’s article, “Why Psychological Safety in the Workplace Should Be on Your Radar.” Playing the “blame game” not only kills creativity and innovation but also erodes trust. The goal should be to encourage personal accountability while discussing problems openly for the sake of finding a solution.
Accountability blossoms in an environment where employees feel psychologically safe. And no one will feel safe to share new ideas or test new strategies if management (or even fellow marketers) are constantly “pointing fingers” when something goes wrong.
3. Be a role model for your team
Leaders shape company culture through their behaviors and mindset. And this also applies to creating a culture of experimentation in your marketing organization. If you’re a marketing leader, aim to be open about the risks you’ve taken and the mistakes you’ve made, as well as the outcomes. Emulate the behaviors you’d like your teams to embrace in order to be more agile and innovative.
Maybe it looks like celebrating someone’s effort, even if it resulted in failure. Or having open conversations about organizational hits and misses. Or even scheduling “Innovation Days” to give marketers time and space to explore their out-of-the-box ideas (like one of my former employers).
A culture of experimentation is driven by the belief that failure is a necessary part of innovation, and innovation requires risk. But to actually work, marketers shouldn’t be held to a standard of perfection. Instead, they must feel supported and empowered in their experimentation and risk-taking. It’s how they’ll come up with new ideas, solve problems, and ultimately learn from failures.
