Don't wait to perfect your marketing ideas

Every marketer has a dozen or more good ideas floating around in their heads at any one time. Any one could be a winner, but the temptation to work it up into a fully formed concept, project or plan alone should be resisted. You could spend valuable time refining and finessing your idea, at the expense of other work, and at the risk of overworking or overstretching the idea.

Never make decisions based on untested ideas, always see how they fly with others first. 

The proven plan for ideas is to have brainstorming sessions where marketers and other creatives can express their brainwaves in pure and simple terms, and see where others will run with them. In the warm light of a room full of colleagues, your ideas can be prodded, teased and tested. 

Those that seemed good in your head but fail some basic tests in the room can politely be discarded, while the better ones should help generate more ideas and motivate the room into working them up. 

It is important to take notes, on a tablet, whiteboard or notebook, but don't stress on the details. Keep the focus on the big picture around any idea. What is its purpose? What will it achieve? How can we make it work? With support from a team, your idea can grow a backbone, a thicker skin, and the creative wings to fly. 

Something that is less likely to happen in the privacy of your own brain or notepad. 



Don't use these meetings to pick or choose "the best idea" or make final decisions; these are purely about exploring the possibilities. Any good idea will be seen and judged on its merits, which is why a good brainstorming session is essential when you and your colleagues' brains are fit to bursting with half-formed concepts. Regular or ad hoc meetings, with plenty of fresh blood to keep the ideas flowing is essential before any major marketing decision is made.