When you should (and shouldn't) follow best practice

When to zig when the crowd zags, and when to zag with the crowd

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my career so far, it’s that there is one overarching “secret” to success in marketing - knowing when it’s best practice to follow best practice, and when it’s best practice NOT to follow best practice.

“Cool Sam, way to get all philosophical on us. Now what the heck does that actually mean?”

Merriam-Webster defines best practice as:

“a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption”

Let’s break this down more simply:

“a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results”

Translation: something that has been done many times and has historically generated positive results

“and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption”

Translation: it is recommended that others follow this if they want to achieve those same positive results

But here’s the thing with “best practice” that took me YEARS to understand. Best practice comes in two different versions:

• Trending best practices

• Fundamental best practices

Trending best practices

Let’s look at a few of today’s more recent B2B “best practices”:

• Sharing video clips from podcasts in social media feeds from individual (not company) accounts

• Using a “call-to-value” instead of a “call-to-action”

• Using auto-dialers to 2-4x BDR productivity

Rewind a few years back and these would’ve sounded like “crazy ideas”. But this is a fundamental part of what makes best practice a best practice - it starts as something new + different from what we see everywhere. It gets higher engagement. It leads to better results. So we share these findings with others so that they can adopt this new practice, gradually leading to mass adoption.

But a funny thing happens once that best practice stops becoming novel + different. It becomes the baseline. It becomes the average. Everyone is doing it. And that best practice is no longer as effective as it was before. Engagement starts dropping down. Results start plateauing (or even decreasing).

Best practice has simply become average at this point.

And if you take one thing away from today’s newsletter, I hope it’s that point right there. You have to catch a trending “best practice” at the right time on the adoption curve if you want to take advantage of it.

Catch it early + you’ll reap the benefits.
Catch it too late + you look and sound like everyone else.

➡️ These are the types best practices that you need to use your judgment on to determine if/when you should or shouldn’t follow them. These are the best practices where it may not always be best practice to follow “best practice.”

Fundamental best practices

This is the fascinating part. This is also the unsexy version of “best practices.”

As noted above, humans are drawn to what’s new, novel, and different. BUT, in order for it to be embraced, it needs to fit within their expected behavioral frameworks.

Let’s use the example I shared earlier of using a “call-to-value” instead of a “call-to-action” button on your website for the trending best practice part.

The typical website call-to-action (CTA) for a B2B company likely reads “Talk to sales” or something similar. An improved call-to-value (CTV) for a B2B company that sells sales software might say “Never miss quota again”.

You’ve followed the trending best practice and hopefully caught it early in the adoption lifecycle to see some incremental improvements.

BUT, what if while moving from CTA to CTV and you really get ambitious and want to improve the efficacy of your CTV by moving the location of it on your website. Instead of following “fundamental best practice” and having it in the top right corner, you think “I’m going to withhold from showing it until further down on the page so the visitors have to scroll and read our content.”

In theory, that makes sense, but in practice, you’ve just broken a cardinal rule and I can tell you this test is dead in the water before you even push it live.

We’ve been trained by thousands of websites that when you want to talk to sales or move forward with a B2B purchase, you can find that next step in the top-right corner of the website. There are certain fundamental best practices that are accepted (and expected) universally by end users.

➡️ These are the best practices you must follow. These are the best practices where it will always be best practice to follow “best practice.”

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One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week

If you ever want a masterclass in modern-day selling, go follow Morgan right now. I’m not in sales, but you can bet your bottom dollar I still learn plenty from him that I can apply within marketing or share with our sales teams.

A week ago I sent out our first batch of event invites via email to senior recruiting leaders and…let’s just say the results left me a bit underwhelmed.

Enter Morgan’s timely advice here - the simplicity of a voice note on LinkedIn. While it’s more work since you have to do it 1:1, I sent 10 off this past week and got replies back on 5 of them. 50% reply rate compared to < 5% reply rate via email. Not too shabby.

Link to his full post

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One podcast episode I enjoyed this week

Sleep.

I enjoyed catching up on sleep this week. Little one hit her 12-month sleep regression this past week (IYKYK), so my normal “entertainment/relaxation” times of reading, listening to podcasts, or watching something was replaced with grabbing an extra 30 min of sleep in the morning or hitting the bed 60 min earlier in anticipation of the nightly wakings.

So unfortunately no podcast episode recommendation this week.

But for anyone interested, here’s a playlist I normally add to each week with some of my favorite podcast episodes:

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See you next Saturday,
Sam