When things don’t go as planned, there’s a voice in the back of our heads that tells us to push harder. When pushing harder doesn’t generate the result we want, the voice tells us to push harder still. When we slice a shot on a long par 5 because we took too big a swing, our next desperate swing will be even harder.
Pushing harder rarely changes the outcome. In fact, it often gets in the way of us seeing the obvious opportunities. In golf as well as marketing, reevaluating our approach is the only way to truly change the result.
Think pull instead of push. Instead of chasing new ways to push what you have onto consumers, step back and ask the tough question: what would you have to do to get consumers to run to you? What would your brand have to look like, what would it have to do, where would it have to be available, exactly who would be most excited about it?
We have so much invested in what we’ve built and the way we’ve always done things that it becomes virtually impossible to stop forcing square pegs into what may simply be round holes. As marketers we have the world’s greatest job: to entice and excite consumers, to listen, inspire and anticipate what they desire most.
It’s time to stop pushing on the wrong pedal.
