Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Use 'Beginner's Mind' In Your Next Marketing Audit
From time to time the brands, website and online marketing campaigns we run need to be examined, and reviewed from a fresh perspective. Often we can be looking at our marketing as if we were stuck inside a bottle with the label on the outside, oblivious to issues that might be glaringly obvious to our customers both existing and potential. When we feel things getting a bit stale, it’s time to pause, climb out of the bottle and look at our marketing effort with ‘Beginner’s Mind’.
Beginner’s Mind is a concept in Zen/Eastern religions and philosophies that encourages adherents to look at their lives and the world, with a mind free of pre-conceptions. To see “things as-it-is”. To look at things with an inquisitive mind, leaving space for re-imagination and opportunity.
From a marketing perspective, it’s all too easy to dismiss opportunities with ‘inside-the-bottle’ thinking. We don’t even allow ourselves to imagine a new way of doing things repeating phrases like ‘well we’ve always had the website laid out like that’ to ourselves and our colleagues. This kind of thinking is limited and potentially detrimental.
From time to time, when we are conducting a marketing audit. Be it a website audit or an audit of our online marketing or a general audit of our entire marketing process. It’s key to try and adopt this fresh perspective. This ‘beginner’s mind’ approach. Perhaps looking at websites and marketing from completely different industries can help us take a different angle on things. Even better, grab someone who’s new to your company to give you a honest opinion. You can even recruit users online and get them to review your marketing with their fresh opinions or hire a professional to conduct a thorough marketing audit.
I personally try to adopt a ‘beginner’s mind’ in a lot of the marketing audits and website reviews I conduct even if I’m not particularly familiar with the brand I’m working with. Whether you get external help or not, when you’re conducting your next marketing audit try to control the preconceptions you have, and be open to opportunities and fresh ways of doing things. I’m confident it will help you make more beneficial enhancements to your website and marketing in general.
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