My 18 year old daughter has been driving for just over a year and 1/2 now. Although she was the perfectly cautious hands at “10am & 2pm” driver when she first started driving, I happened to witness her barreling down my street and whipping into our drive-way with her music blasting this past week. In addition to the death stare, I cautioned her that the number one cause of car accidents was “driver over confidence.”

Her timing however, could not have been more perfect as I has spent much of the past week thinking about conversations that I’d had with as many as five marketers who fit the category of “over confident drivers” to a tee and perhaps not in the way that one might think. I define this “over confidence” as a very narrow sided approach to one’s marketing efforts where the person appears more focused on day-to-day tactics, high productivity, and “gut” marketing versus a truly data-driven strategy. These were marketers, who in my conversations said things like…

“We just have to get content out there and see what happens. Knowing what our competitors are doing and what’s working for them really doesn’t matter to us.”
Or - “Our industry is different; we don’t have any competitors and being in more channels wont help us to generate more leads, which is really my only focus.”
My Personal Favorite -“Half of our marketing efforts are successful, but I just don’t know which half .”
And, the one that scared me even more was this response to the question — What if your prospect has content out there that is driving engagement and impact among your competitive audience or is winning share of voice on a channel that you aren’t pushing content into? And the response…“Our prospects already have a solution in place and they will just go with us once they displace their existing solution because were cheaper.”
I also got this response to the same question - “Were a small team with a small budget we can’t try anything new “.

While I was concerned over these statements, I am actually thankful for the energy they instilled in me to write this post. Hopefully, if you have a response like the ones above, this post will have the same effect in you as that of my “dark-eyed stare” toward my daughter and the accompanying verbal threat of losing the keys. Perhaps the fear of loss in your case is more dramatic, especially if you are one those marketers whose average tenure is less than 18 months and you have an interest in lasting longer. If nothing else, perhaps this post will help you to avoid the chance of even a simple “fender bender” as you execute on your upcoming campaigns & marketing programs. I’ve listed 3 tips below to help you avoid becoming the overconfident driver/marketer who is certain to cause a wreck, injury to their career or even worse make your tenure shorter than expected with your current company.

Keep Your Eyes on the Road

It’s a well known fact that defensive drivers have less accidents and the best offense is always a good defense. Modern marketers can defend themselves by constantly being on the lookout for tools that help employ tactics and techniques. And at the same time that help them to gain efficiency, improve effectiveness, contribute to revenue, and demonstrate their impact on the business. Joe Chernov is one such modern marketer who shared a great presentation at the recent Content World Conference on a number of new tools and platforms found here.

The world for marketers is constantly changing like the curvy, one-lane road where I taught my daughter to drive. Like my daughter, you too must stay alert to and be prepared for the changing landscape or you could end up in a ditch or (even worse) lost on the back roads that delay your success when you could have taken the expressway. If Insanity can be defined as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results;” it would be wise move for marketers to be aware of what’s ahead, around, and beside them. It is also important for you to remain flexible enough to “lean with it and rock with it” without losing control. You don’t have to pounce on every new technology, tactic, or technique that comes along; yet, you should be aware and prepared to take advantage of some of them. (Especially so if it can have an immediate impact on your efforts, help you to overcome challenges, and/or assist in the achievement of your most pressing goals.)

Watch Your Following Distance

Many years ago on my very last day of drivers education school, my instructor told my class that 50% of us would have an accident in our first 3-5 years of driving and that 80% of those accidents would be a rear-end collision. He cautioned all of us to watch our following distance and I sensed his sincerity, which is why his words stuck with me as I hope these words stick with you. My instructor was spot on in my case and after just 2 years of driving (as I stared at my mothers brand new Cutlass Supreme with the front-end smashed up) his words came back to me. If you are like most marketers, you are starting to plan your budget for 2014 and as you determine the content and programs and channels where you plan on pushing out content, I would advise that you consider and set aside as much as 25% of your budget be dedicated to Real-Time Marketing Intelligence. As great as the plan that you are designing and plan on following for 2014 may be, you must be able to react to what your brand audience care about and are engaging with at any given moment. This means being agile and mobile. If you are following the plan too closely and don’t allow for flexibility, you could end up “rear-ending” yourself while your competitors are winning, earning, and owning the share of voice as well as “trusted advisor” status by producing compelevant (compelling & relevant) content on channels where your plan doesn’t allow you to go. The plan should include the ability to adjust to prospects rapidly changing tastes without losing your brand identity. I always say “flexible people never get bent out of shape” .

Regularly Check Your Gauges

I am proud to say that I’ve never actually run out of fuel in any of my cars, but regrettably have nearly destroyed one by not changing the oil or acting on the light that told me to change it. New engines are pretty costly as is the cost of a new hire (which there will likely be in your place ) if you aren’t constantly aware of and improving upon your metrics. All marketing should start and end with data-driven insights. Sadly reported is the fact that 76% of marketers believe that they know what their audience wants while only 34% have actually asked them. As modern marketers, you must not only understand your own metrics, but also your comparisons on both an absolute and relative basis. You should also be able to demonstrate how these metrics have changed over time. So what you got 300 likes on your blog post? How does that compare to your average and that of your competitors over the same period? What content in the last week is driving impact and/or engagement for you and your competitors over the same period? Your executives are expecting you to know how to report on and share results in a contextual way. If they aren’t expecting it, they will likely lose their keys and driving privileges before too long. Don’t find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere in 2014 because you lacked awareness and/or the insights that would have given you the ability to stay on the path to success. Keep your eyes on your gauges and routine maintenance should be part of the plan.

Driver over confidence can happen to anyone not just distracted 18 year old girls but also with Congress, Senators and Sales people alike. In every instance the results are always detrimental and not just for the overconfident ones, but also the innocent victims. For busy marketers who are challenged with fragmentation, volume, and constant changes in prospect tastes, overconfidence can and is often coupled with low curiosity and unawareness that sadly leads to becoming workaholics or (even worse) spectators who know that they need to adjust but don’t. You cannot continue to blame your workload or even lack of budget for your inability to innovate. Are there channels that you are unaware of or have avoided looking into because you don’t believe your audience is there? Are you plugging away & pushing out blog content week after week that is not getting any engagement? Are you more focused on going through the motions of producing content and programs than driving engagement, impact and/or share of voice with your prospective audiences? Have you built and blown your budget again this year focused on events and tactics alone without allowing you room to be agile, reactive and real-time?

Consider this post your dark-eyed stare. Determine that for the rest of this year and as you go into next year that you will increase your awareness. Add that to your performance as you move you into the coveted leadership quadrant as Marketing Expert like Joe Chernov — And the Church said… “Amen.”

If you enjoyed this post comment with your “Amen” or with your thoughts on ways marketers can avoid over confidence and keep their awareness high. Tweet here using the the hashtag #AmenMarketing or #TrackMavenRTMI!