Nearly three decades ago, Michael Porter warned us about the dangers of relying on benchmarking and “best practices” to produce business success. In a landmark Harvard Business Review article, Porter drew a sharp distinction between operational effectiveness – which often involves identifying and implementing best practices – and real business strategy.
Porter argued that competing primarily on the basis of operational effectiveness is usually a recipe for disaster. He wrote: “The more benchmarking companies do, the more they look alike . . . As rivals imitate one another’s improvements in quality, cycle times, or supplier partnerships, strategies converge and competition becomes a series of races down identical paths that no one can win.”
Four years after Porter’s article, Philipp Nattermann made a similar argument in an article for the McKinsey Quarterly. In his article, Nattermann contended that benchmarking and the use of best practices are important ways to improve operational efficiency, but they are not tools for strategic decision-making. He wrote that business leaders rely too much on benchmarking and best practices because:
“. . . they don’t understand that benchmarking is simply an operational tool. Instead, they all want to occupy the point on the strategic landscape that their most successful competitor has staked out. Soon other competitors can be seen herding, lemminglike, around that best practice company’s product, pricing, and channel strategies. Products and services become increasingly commoditized and margins tumble as more and more incumbents compete for smaller and smaller segments of customers and industry resources.”
Despite these warnings, business leaders continue to regard identifying and implementing best practices as one of the most powerful management tools at their disposal. And it’s not difficult to understand why. It seems imminently reasonable to identify what high-performing companies are doing and then emulate those practices.
The Allure of Marketing Best Practices
Marketers can become particularly enamored with best practices. After all, marketing success is difficult to achieve and even harder to sustain because the marketing landscape is always changing, and because it’s tough to predict what marketing methods, channels, and messages will appeal to potential customers. In these circumstances, it shouldn’t be surprising that marketers are attracted to “proven” best practices.
Marketers are also strongly attracted to new marketing channels and methods. They tend to believe that constant innovation is essential for marketing success. As a result, most marketers tend to equate “new” practices with “best” practices, at least when the new practices appear to be performing well at other companies.
Most marketing best practices come with an explicit or implicit claim: Use this channel or tactic and your marketing performance will improve significantly. However, the reality is rarely that simple.
A marketing best practice typically addresses one aspect of marketing, while marketing success usually results from the combined effect of numerous factors. Therefore, best practices don’t provide a formula that will automatically guarantee marketing success. Unfortunately, it’s easy for marketers to become enthralled with the promised benefits of best practices and lose sight of their limitations.
Marketers need to be particularly aware of two limiting attributes of marketing best practices.
Best Practices Results Aren’t Always Transferable
As I noted earlier, marketing success is usually due to several factors. Therefore, the results produced by a best practice are highly dependent on the context in which it’s used.
Suppose, for example, that you attend a marketing conference, and you hear several speakers rave about the fantastic results they’re getting from using a specific marketing tactic, say short-form video. You can’t assume that short-form video will automatically produce similar results for your company. Your results will depend on several factors that are unique to your company.
Widespread Use Decreases Effectiveness
One of the most paradoxical characteristics of marketing best practices is that the more widely they are used, the less effective they tend to become.
Marketing best practices can be effective – at least for a while – because they are distinctive. When a marketing practice is new, it is used by a relatively small number of companies. Therefore, the practice stands out in the marketplace and captures the attention of potential customers. But as more and more companies implement the practice, it loses some of the distinctiveness that made it effective. Content marketing is a good example of a marketing best practice that has become more challenging because it is so widely used.
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I’m not suggesting that marketing best practices have no value. What I am suggesting is that the implementation of marketing best practices isn’t a sure-fire, can’t-miss recipe for success.
