“It’s all iterative.”
That’s my new motto: It’s all iterative.
I’ve adopted it from a digital marketing presentation that Erik Gensler — Founder of Capacity Interactive — gave in early 2020. Capacity Interactive is a marketing consulting firm that specializes in digital arts marketing for arts and culture nonprofits. One of their clients is Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, my former employer and now current client.
Iterative as a concept is particularly poignant. In the presentation, Erik indicated that because the nature of digital marketing evolves so quickly and so frequently, brands need to adopt that fluidity in order to thrive. This Capacity Interactive article, written by Tessitura’s Kristin Darrow, ties that idea to web design, but I see many ways to apply it to marketing as a whole:
“We think of websites as constantly evolving, at least when it comes to words and images. But what about the design of the website? Should the website design constantly evolve too? If websites remain static, their biggest strength (near-instant adaptability and change) turns into its biggest weakness (irrelevance and obsolescence).
Consider how often you notice CNN or Amazon changing their web design — hardly ever, yet their sites are constantly evolving. Favoring minor, data-driven changes (the movement of a button up the page, a slight change in text size, rearranged navigation elements) that nip and tuck the user experience into the seamless, rather than rearrange-everything design overhauls.
We need to shift our mindsets: ‘redesign’ to ‘iterative design.’ It requires us to think about building websites that are purpose-built for change, much like a theatrical stage is designed to support any kind of set or lighting transformation.”
I’ve embraced the idea of iterative design and applied it to building my business, even though they may seem unrelated at first glance. Iterative means that I take a stab at creating my own brand content and being OK if it doesn’t work. Iterative means looking at my own performance and, instead of criticizing the parts that didn’t go well, reframing them as opportunities to look closer and understand why they aren’t performing the way I intended. Iterative means that I consider smaller, simpler solutions to an issue instead of considering it a total failure, scrapping the whole thing, scrubbing it from the record and starting over from scratch.
It feels foreign. I’ve spent years working on creative projects and developing the muscles of planning, drafting, creating, revising and readying something for polished publication. It’s lent itself to some perfectionist tendencies (which I’m happy to have retained as a strength because it makes me incredibly detailed and careful). But when it comes to building a business today, iterative calls on me to focus on flexibility in addition to strength.
An iterative approach suggests that we treat brands as living, breathing things. As humans. They need tending and refining, check-ups and remedies. They grow and develop in different stages in response to new events. They need to try new things in order to learn more things. This falls in line neatly with another point Erik made during his presentation: “The most human brand wins.”
I can’t help but consider the timeliness of the iterative approach. The world looks and feels very different from what it was before 2020. In response to sudden change, brands (and people) had to build their plane as it was flying. Nobody knew how to perform well — we just had to perform and hope for the best. Almost two years after this massive shift, we’ve gained so many new insights that apply directly to the present and the near future. That’s the essence of iterative.
So, what do my next steps look like? Here’s a teaser:
Try it. That new content idea, that new outreach approach, that new branding strategy. Just try it. See if it sticks. Find the lessons if it doesn’t.
Less talking, more listening. A lot of times I feel like branding my business requires me to wear a proverbial sandwich board and ring a bell in promotion of my services. For someone who doesn’t like to be the center of attention, this already feels uncomfortable. But there’s so much to learn by shifting focus from self-promotion to service. It filters out the noise of advertising and gets to the root of why businesses work: They solve problems for people. In my case, my services solve problems for artists, brands and organizations by way of communications and messaging. That’s so much more comfortable to promote than yelling, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer!” endlessly into a cloud of noise.
Stay connected. As unoriginal as that sounds, brands need to connect in order to have impact. They need to meet their audience and community where they are. What problems can brands solve for their audiences, now? What do their audiences need? What do they value in this moment, and what have they left behind? As creative marketers, it’s easy to get swept up in our own artistic ideas for communications and sales strategies. But if you take your cues from the audience — from user behavior — to decide what’s working, what’s not and what ideas to invest in and learn from next, you’ll leverage the power of iterative optimization at it’s finest.
Love the A/B test. I credit my former Playhouse coworker and now forever friend, Aly Gomez, for lifting up the value of the A/B test. As the digital marketing guru of the marketing team, she always encouraged this strategy for social media. In group A, we’d see how one call-to-action performs; in group B, we’d see how slightly different language or a different piece of content performs. What did we learn from the results? (I must brag by proxy that, very recently, Aly has graduated from Playhouse digital marketing wizard to Capacity Interactive strategist!)
Embrace the new. We’re all consuming a diverse spectrum of content, and it’s anything but universal. What works for one brand may not necessarily work for another. Embrace that. Creating content that’s fresh, strategic, responsive and human is the new template.
Iterative doesn’t need to be intimidating. I credit the same Capacity Interactive article for infusing the philosophy with inherent positivity:
“Take risks, expect to fail, expect to grow and change, and know that you will establish new and more successful ground. Repeat.”
In the coming new year, iterative is the word of the day, every day.
*Many thanks to Aly Gomez for endless professional influence and for eyeing this blog post for accuracy!
