Let me start with an important disclaimer: I am not a dad yet.
My wife and I are expecting our first child, which means I am currently in that interesting stage where I have read things, bought things, assembled things and received plenty of advice, but still have exactly zero days of actual parenting experience.
To be fair, I’m not completely new to babies. My mom ran a daycare out of our home when I was growing up, and I have plenty of nieces and nephews. I’ve changed my fair share of diapers.
I just haven’t changed one at 2:00 in the morning after getting three hours of sleep while knowing I’m the one responsible for keeping this tiny human alive.
So, take everything I’m about to say with an appropriate grain of salt.
Still, as we prepare for the baby, I’ve found myself noticing a few similarities between preparing to become a parent and the work we do every day in marketing.
You Need a Plan. You Also Need to Expect the Plan to Change.
There is a lot you can do to prepare for a baby. You can read books, take classes, prepare the nursery and make plans for seemingly every scenario.
But from everything I’ve been told, the baby will eventually arrive and promptly remind us that he or she did not review our plan.
Marketing works much the same way.
Owners of small-to-medium-sized businesses absolutely should have a strategy. Know your audience. Establish goals. Determine your budget. Decide which tactics make sense. But then you have to pay attention and be willing to adjust.
A good marketing plan provides direction without becoming so rigid that you ignore what is actually happening.
There Is No Shortage of Advice.
One thing I’ve learned already is that when you’re expecting a baby, people are very willing to share advice.
Some of it is helpful. Some of it contradicts the advice you received five minutes earlier. And some of it comes with the strong implication that there is only one correct way to do something.
Marketing isn’t much different.
There is always a new platform you “need” to be on, an AI tool that will supposedly change everything or a tactic that worked incredibly well for someone else.
The problem is that what works for one business—or one baby—might not work for another.
Good marketing requires understanding your particular situation, goals, audience and resources rather than blindly following whatever someone else says you should be doing.
Patience Is Probably Going to Be Important.
I suspect I’m about to learn quite a bit about patience.
Fortunately, marketing has given me some practice.
Not everything produces an immediate result. SEO takes time. Brand awareness takes time. Relationships take time. Even a well-built advertising campaign may need time and data before you really understand what is working.
That doesn’t mean you blindly keep doing something that clearly isn’t working. But constantly changing direction because you didn’t see immediate results can be just as problematic.
Sometimes business leaders need to work the plan and give it a chance.
You Probably Shouldn’t Try to Do Everything Yourself.
Between doctors, family, friends and people who have actually raised children before, I’m becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea that I won’t have all the answers.
Businesses shouldn’t expect to have all the marketing answers internally either.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is recognize what you’re good at, identify where you need help and surround yourself with people who have experience in those areas.
At TRG, that’s a big part of what we do for our clients.
I may have spent a good portion of my childhood around a daycare. I may have changed diapers, held babies and seen enough nieces and nephews grow up to have at least some idea of what I’m getting into.
But I also know that helping with someone else’s child for a few hours is very different from being the dad at 2:00 in the morning. So there is a very real possibility that I still have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe I’ll revisit this topic a few months after the baby arrives and see which observations held up, and which ones clearly came from someone who wasn’t a dad yet.
If you’d like to talk marketing sometime—or have parenting advice—I can be reached at jacob@TRG-Marketing.com.
