When Good Headlines Go Bad (or, Oops! Did I Say That?)
Back on January 9th, I posted on this site an article with the title, “Are 947 Marketing Tools Enough?” The article was in response to the latest “marketing technology landscape supergraphic” by Scott Brinker, CTO of Ion Interactive. This year’s graphic was exceptional for two reasons:
- It’s usual comprehensive analysis of the state of the marketing tools industry.
- The incredible number of tools available.
The intent of my post was to point out that while 947 tools is certainly a lot, it’s actually good for the industry. I also mentioned that for the end-user, it can be a bit overwhelming to have to choose from so many tools. As a solution, I offered my services to help marketers navigate the landscape (hey, that’s what I do).
However, the issue was with the title, “Are 947 Marketing Tools Enough?”
I like provocative titles. To be sure, being provocative isn’t appropriate for everybody, but I like them and have written a lot of posts with similar, or even down right sarcastic, titles.
Yesterday, as I was preparing a weeklong post series that will run next week (about marketing lessons learned from a trip to Italy), the title caught my eye; and I thought it was obnoxious.
While I certainly didn’t mean it that way, there it was. So I changed it to a more conservative and generic, “Navigating the Marketing Tool Ecosystem.”
I didn’t think the title would stand out, but it got the point across. And guess what? I got some nice emails about the post and inquiries for my services.
To be sure, there are entire websites about creating evocative headlines, but sometimes the K.I.S.S. solutions works best; Keep it Simple, Stupid.
