When you’ve carefully thought out and are successfully implementing your marketing strategy, you probably want to keep at it while the going is good. You’ve put so much work into it and now that everything’s going so well, why stop when you’re on top? Consider these three reasons for giving your marketing a breather:
1. Burnout. As with exercise, a break from high-intensity activity will help you avoid burnout. Rather than achieving even better results, overdoing may exhaust and weaken you. If you’ve done everything just right, your marketing efforts can probably run on autopilot for a while. Because it takes time for the effects of your marketing initiatives to manifest themselves, you might as well spend the time lag restoring your energy and building endurance.
2. Distance. It’s easy to get immersed in the thrill of a successful marketing campaign. It’s also easy to lose sight of details you may have overlooked or unknowingly got wrong. If you’re in the thick of the forest, it’s hard to see what’s over the next ridge. Consultants thrive in part because they provide an outside perspective. Step outside your marketing, do something else for a while — take a long weekend far far away, no laptop, no smart phone — and you may discover what’s been there all along.
3. Insight. You may also find that turning off your marketing may also yield unexpected insights, particularly when your marketing gets stuck in a rut. The New Yorker recently ran an article exploring how insight occurs. When you encounter a challenge, your left brain engages in solving the problem at hand. Often the solution eludes you because of excessive focus. Only when your mind wanders does your right brain kick in to provide a less obvious association or context – the insight. Take a moment to focus on not focusing (warm showers and half-sleep work wonders), and discover what may have not necessarily been there at all.
If you give your marketing a bit of rest, it will not only be there tomorrow, it will be more sustainable in the long run. What’s your experience?
