TL;DR
Best practices in digital marketing aren't one-size-fits-all solutions. While foundational principles like testing and brand consistency matter, blindly following "best practices" can trap you in formulaic thinking. The key is understanding when to apply them, when to break them, and recognizing when someone's just trying to sell you something disguised as a best practice.
Best practices for marketing are everywhere. Every platform, vendor, and self-proclaimed guru has a list of them. But here's what we've learned after years of running campaigns: best practices can be both helpful guides and lazy thinking.
The term "best practices" has become nearly meaningless in marketing. Is it referring to what's worked over the past decade? A tactic that's supposedly timeless? Or just something that worked once for someone who decided to write about it?
The reality is that what works changes constantly. When everyone follows the same playbook, doing something different becomes the pattern interrupt that actually drives engagement. Your "best practice" might actually be what's making you less successful.
Here's a tell: when someone's pushing best practices hard, they're often trying to sell you something. Platforms want you to use all their features. Measurement tools want you to measure everything their way. The pattern is clear: best practices often come with a price tag.
Real best practices aren't behind paywalls. There's no secret sauce that will transform your marketing program overnight, known only to one vendor. If someone says otherwise, keep your wallet closed.
From a creative standpoint, best practices are about the anatomy of effective ads. Attention-grabbing hooks, brand recall elements, value propositions, and clear calls to action. These aren't rigid rules but a checklist of elements generally contributing to performance.
The key insight? You don't need all of them every time. Sometimes removing an in-creative CTA makes sense for your brand. Sometimes static images outperform video, despite what every vendor tells you about video being essential.
There's a crucial difference between breaking rules randomly and breaking them purposefully. Think about how Picasso mastered classical figure drawing before creating abstract art. The same applies to digital creative — you need to understand why a practice exists before you can effectively break it.
Some filmmakers don't follow the rule of thirds. Everything is centered and symmetrical, breaking conventional wisdom. But it works because it's intentional, not arbitrary. When you break best practices randomly, you create a mess. When you break them purposefully, you create distinction.
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Here are some of the practices we think actually matter:
Test constantly. Markets change. What worked yesterday might not work today.
Maintain consistency. Your landing page needs to match your ad. Your customer service needs to match your brand promise. Every touchpoint matters.
Know your anatomy. Whether it's the golden ratio in design or the essential elements of an ad, understand the fundamentals before you experiment.
Be brave enough to test. The digital space offers forgiveness for creative license. Use it to learn what actually works for your brand. If everyone's doing video, maybe your static image stands out. If everyone's posting at 9 AM, maybe 2 PM is your moment.
Best practices are guidelines, not gospel. They're starting points, not endpoints. Use them to establish a baseline, then test, iterate, and find what actually works for your specific situation.
The evil of best practices isn't in following them, it's in following them blindly. The good is in understanding why they exist, then making informed decisions about when to use them, adapt them, or completely ignore them.
If something doesn't work for you, then it's not your best practice, no matter how well it works for someone else.