We marketers today are susceptible enough to the shiny new object and newest way to capture attention, get more data on a prospect, or to come up with the catchy new campaign or graphic that will wow the crowd. That's our nature, and that's a huge part of the business of how we stay relevant and drive value for our teams and our companies.
But we also can't forget that most of what makes great marketers is getting great results. And as I've written previously, you get great results by doing the work. Again and again. Whether it's the rule of 10,000 hours you ascribe to, or just a worth ethic installed by your parents, you need to hone your craft. But you don't hone by flitting from one thing to the other--you hone by doing the one thing over and over again until you get it perfect.
Then you go onto the next thing. And, of course, that's not a marketing rule, that's life. Life is doing things over and over again. Rinsing and repeating.
Our goal is to find the joy in that process. To be willing to put on a smile and lean forward to try to get the campaign just 0.5% better on its response rate today, to start the hiring process again when a candidate drops out, to try to explain one more time to a disbelieving team how the marketing function is driving value.
Whatever it is, it takes more than once or twice to make the impact. And you have to want to go after it--you can't assume that you do it once and it's done--it's not. It takes careful feeding and watering, and rinsing and repeating, again and again, to make it a success.