You Are Under No Obligation to Be the Same Person You Were 5 Minutes Ago

The most successful marketing campaigns aren't the ones with perfect plans – they're the ones built with breathing room aka marketing margins.

Your last marketing campaign probably didn't go exactly as planned which immediately surfaces the use value of using marketing margins as your buffer zone. These buffers can be the difference between a campaign that crumbles under unexpected pressure and one that adapts and thrives.

In my work with marketing professionals, they often share that their biggest failures weren't from lack of creativity or poor strategy – they were from not having enough wiggle room when things went sideways. They built bridges, if you will, that could barely handle their expected traffic, instead of ones that could manage ten times the load.

This may be a new concept for you so here are a few practical applications.

• Budget Margins: Instead of allocating 100% of your marketing budget upfront reserve 20-30% for unexpected opportunities or challenges. If you become the next big thing, or when a competitor makes an unexpected move, you'll have the resources to respond.

•Timeline Margins: The most resilient marketing teams I've observed build in timeline buffers. If they think a campaign will take six weeks to execute, they plan for eight. This isn't pessimism rather it is acknowledging that creativity and coordination often need more time than we initially estimate.

• Channel Margins: Never put all the eggs in one basket. Maintain relationships with multiple channels and platforms, even if you're currently only heavily investing in a few. It's an insurance policy against platform changes or audience shifts.

Won't this slow us down? No. Marketing margins make you more competitive in the long run. While your competitors are scrambling to deal with unexpected ai developments, algorithm changes, market shifts, or creative failures, you have the flexibility to adapt and evolve.

I recently spoke with a CMO who told me something important to share with you. She said, "The most expensive marketing plan is the one that fails because it had no room for error." That's stuck with me because it perfectly captures why marketing margins should be built into whatever strategy you are currently cooking up.

This is not a prescription for planning for failure. You are planning for reality by asking ahead of deployment "What if I'm wrong? What if the market shifts? What if our primary strategy doesn't resonate?".

Margins today contribute to tomorrow's success stories.