Is your marketing stuck on autopilot? Don't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different

results.

Last night, I mopped the kitchen floor after dinner. I put away the mop and pail and went upstairs to do some

work. My husband yelled up the stairs, "Why did you leave the light on over the sink?" We have one of those bright

fluorescent lights over the sink that you can leave on separately from the overhead light in the kitchen.

I stopped for a moment on the stairs. I said, "I always do when I mop the floor."

"I know," he said. "But why?"

"So anyone coming into the kitchen can see that the floor is wet," I said.

"They can turn on the overhead light for that."

Okay. So why was I leaving the light on over the sink?

It took me a few minutes to remember that leaving the light on over the sink after mopping and waxing the

kitchen floor was my mother's little signal to the five of us kids that the floor was wet. The basement playroom,

where we had our toys, games and television set, could only be reached by crossing the kitchen floor. By leaving

the light on in the kitchen of my childhood home, we could see from the living room that she had just washed and

waxed the floor. It was our cue to wait. When the light was turned off an hour later, we could run through the kitchen

and get back to the serious business of playing.

I thought about my actions with amusement. In my current home, there's no need to leave that light on. But I do it anyway. It's instinctive. I don't even think about the

why of it any more - I just do it automatically.

Sometime we get into ruts like this with our marketing efforts. We just keep doing a marketing activity because it

is something that's always been done.

Let me give you a hypothetical situation. Let's assume you are a marketing manager just hired into a company, and you look at the yearly marketing budget and see a huge expenditure on trade shows. The natural question to ask is, "Okay, how much do we make from our trade shows?

How many leads do we get?" You speak to the sales manager who is responsible for having the sales staff work at the trade shows, and he tells you something even more

surprising. The company gets few or no leads from the shows.

The trade show booth is in tatters, the sales people say that trade shows never produce leads, and the sales

manager complains that his sales staff are never able to complete their regular duties because they were always traveling to and from trade shows or working at trade

shows.

After assessing the budget, you realize that if you stop going to trade shows, the money you save can be spent on a website upgrade. Updating and enhancing the website

supports the company's sales and customer outreach goals.

It's a fight, but you get the company to make the change. Six months later, the new website attracts more customers and gains leads, the sales staff is happy because they can work their usual territories and not travel so much, and

you have saved a lot of money on the travel budget.

All of this because you were willing to examine a marketing activity everyone had just assumed was the way things were done...the only way to promote the company

and its activities. It was how things were done. At first, trade shows may have worked well. But many years later,

this marketing activity no longer serves its purpose. It doesn't achieve the goals. Yet it had become so

established as part of "how we market Company XYZ" that previous marketing managers had been unwilling to

change.

This imaginary company had gotten into a rut because the "this was how things were done." It was the accepted way. It was what people were comfortable doing. They couldn't

stand going to the trade shows and the trade shows weren't working for them (they may be the best tactic for

you, mind you - they just weren't working for this company). But it was old, comfortable and familiar.

I have a pair of jeans like that. I refuse to throw them out. They have holes everywhere, the denim is faded, and the hem is falling down. I wear them to garden and clean out

the garage. They're old friends, comforting, familiar, reliable.

Sometimes we start to think about our marketing activities like that: familiar routines, comforting rituals, easy to keep going. The problem is that if you don't take a moment to examine what you are doing and why you're doing it, you could be throwing good money after bad. If the marketing

activities are no longer helping you achieve your goals, however you define those goals, they're no longer useful

or valuable.

Are you ready to throw out those old jeans, turn off the kitchen light after you mop the floor, or examine your

marketing activities and results and see what you need to change? Take an hour this month to look over your

marketing activities, results and data. If you decide that a change is in order, give it a few months to see the results.

Remember, you can always go back to what you had....but if what you had wasn't working for you and your business

goals, it might be time to adjust course.

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