Every marketing challenge is different and therefore deserves thought and a creative solution. But I still find it useful to consider a few rules of thumb, the first of which is: “Something” beats “nothing” every time. In other words, it’s always better to do SOMETHING to promote your product.

On one level, this goes without saying because we all understand that the world will NOT beat a path to your door to buy your better mousetrap unless you TELL them about it. So the need for some form of marketing is taken as a given.

But even given that realization, we often get stuck, and the culprit is often our perfectionism. We have a laudable desire to maintain a high standard in everything we do…We can’t quite see our way to settling on a strategy or making the perfect video, catalog, or whatever…And in the end, nothing gets done.

It was a hard lesson for me to learn and I still struggle with it, but it’s always better to get the message out, even if it’s not perfect!

How much imperfection or insecurity should we be comfortable with? That brings us to Rule #2…