What do doctors’ mistakes have to do with marketing?

Marketing people aren’t in the life or death business — even if it seems that way sometimes. However, recognizing pitfalls than can lead to bad outcomes should be a life-skill for marketers — as well as doctors.

For the past several months, I've been monitoring reports and surveys about errors doctors make treating patients, especially those with complex symptoms. This is not to start a blame game. It started out as a way to make sure I played my part in the diagnosis, communicating my circumstance clearly.

Then I realized there were several common kinds of miss-steps that lead to bad outcomes.

Two of them were particularly useful as a reminder to marketers.

The Over Confidence Blunder

This blunder could be described as a tendency to act on incomplete information, institutions or hunches. Too much faith is placed in opinion instead of carefully gathered evidence”.

This reminded me of a bank client of mine once decided, without any notice to customers (this was before the TISA regulations), to convert all their free checking accounts to a $4.99 fee, per month. This decision was made in reliance upon a profitability consultant with no consultation with anyone else ?in the? bank— least of all the marketing department. My client put the change into effect within 24 hours of the decision. In the first 7 days, the bank lost 30% of those accounts, taking $2 million in deposits with them. Did I mention the bank was an only a $400 million bank? Yes, a clear-cut case of overconfidence bias.

The Bandwagon Blunder

The bandwagon blunder is the tendency for people on a…team to believe and do certain things because many others are doing so.

We’ve all seen this happen a bunch of times. Fifteen years, or so ago, we saw many companies launch a major-big-time Facebook program, mostly because one or more of their peers did. Off they went with not a scrap of strategy in sight. Typically, the program bombed and all around the company you hear, not that the team screwed up, but that Facebook was worthless. (This is an example of “Fundamental Attrition Error”, as in, the failure was Facebook, not us.)

Maybe some “blunder-proofing” would be a clever idea?

What is needed is more careful analytical thinking and less headlong decision making. Before pulling the trigger, take a break and ask yourself, “Have I really thought through the implications of what I’m about to do? Have I carefully considered all the outcomes (loss of market share, wasted resources, etc.) that may ensue? (If this sounds a lot like marketing/advertising planning to you, that’s good.) We make decisions every day. Let’s take a moment and be sure we’re making a good one.

We’d be happy to do some blunder-proofing brainstorming with you.? No cost. No obligation. No gimmicks.? Message me on LinkedIn.