Ideas or Implementation – What’s Your Superpower?

Are you more analytical or creative? Right brain or left brain dominant? Great at brainstorming ideas or do you implement like a boss? We all have things we enjoy doing more than others, and things we are naturally more talented at than others. When it comes to marketing, which is more desirable?

There is no right answer – it’s a trick question. You need both. Sometimes people get the notion that marketing is where all the creative people live, and if you can’t hold your own, you better not be playing in their sandbox. I’m here to tell you that is both silly and untrue. Yes, creativity is an important component in coming up with ideas, but someone has to get that magic out there. And track it. And figure out if it works.

Want to know how to do both?

Often it is helpful to write down a list of every marketing and branding task you can think of. A partial list might include:

creating a customer list
designing a new logo
setting a marketing budget
creating a tagline
creating an editorial calendar
doing a customer survey
writing website content
finding the right email technology
doing competitive research
posting on Facebook
connecting on LinkedIn
doing a photography shoot
designing a direct mail campaign
and so on, and so on, and so on…

Now let’s dive deeper – you will begin to notice some items on your list fall under either the Creative/Idea category or the Analytical/Implementation category. The more granular you are, the easier it is to see. Pulling together your customer list or choosing software applications are implementation activities. Creating a tagline is largely a creative and visionary activity. You will also notice that the bigger, multi-step items include both creativity AND analysis. Posting on social media requires coming up with the creative content and images AND scheduling the actual post on the best platform at the right time and day. Designing a direct mail campaign requires developing goals and objectives for the campaign, developing a theme, creating effective calls to action, writing, designing all the pieces, AND obtaining your list, getting it all printed, scheduled, mailed, and tracked. You may want to break down the bigger items into several items to help identify which category they belong to.

When you look at your marketing this way, you gain clarity on where you have gaps and where you need help. You can then plan to switch on and off your own left brain or right brain powers as needed, assign different tasks to different people on your team, or call in outside help. In marketing, as in life, it always comes down to doing what you do best and asking for help with the rest. Pretending we possess superpowers we don’t have can get real ugly, real fast. When we use our superpowers for good, everyone wins.