Most people think that the bulk of marketing is made up of having one great idea and creating a catchy slogan and eye-catching graphics around it — but that simply isn’t the case.
That’s not to say that coming up with innovative ideas isn’t an important part of the process, but in actuality there are three important components when it comes to running a successful marketing campaign:
- Idea Generation
- Content Creation
- Operations
If you want my honest opinion, I think that most people ignore operations, which really have the ability to make or break a marketing campaign.
Let’s break it down even further. If we want to figure out the sum of a successful campaign, it looks a bit like this:
- Idea Generation: 1%
- Content Creation: 5%
- Operations: 94%
Here’s why:
Ideas are a dime a dozen these days. Don’t get me wrong — a great idea is a great idea, but there are so many new ways to come up with them (including letting advanced AI like ChatGPT do your brainstorming for you).
But a great idea that’s poorly executed never leads to a successful campaign.
Even content creation isn’t the essential piece many believe it is. Honestly, in recent years, content has become somewhat commoditized in that there’s so much of it out there that you no longer need to produce necessarily good content to get exposure. Think TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other platforms where the average user can create content by filming on their phones.
There’s still definitely a time and a place for higher-quality, produced content (like TV commercials, website content, and so on). But content creation no longer has the same barrier to entry it once did, and that’s why it’s only five percent of a great campaign.
So why is operations the most crucial element of great marketing?
Even if you have the best idea in the world and have the greatest content ever to match it, if you don’t execute it correctly, then it’s not going to take off.
The operations part of marketing assures that you have everything right on the back end in order to succeed on the front end. The idea can be iterated effectively with great operations. The content creation can be project-managed to fruition thanks to great operations. Quality control measures can be built into the process with effective operations.
Operations is where the rubber meets the road, and it’s important to prioritize it in your marketing.
