5 things you wish you already knew

From Drayton Bird’s blog, Five shocking lessons from a lifetime in marketing. These are good for fundraising too:

1. Hardly anybody studies. (If you give any energy at all to learning about fundraising, you’ll instantly be among the experts.)
   
2. Most marketing fails because most marketers do not measure the results of their investment. (If you aren’t measuring your fundraising, you will never improve.)
   
3. Marketers confuse cleverness and entertainment with effectiveness. (It’s not about looking good among your colleagues and pals — it’s about motivating your donors. Very different things.)
   
4. Marketers are foolish followers of fashion. They follow every new sexy idea. (Most of the sexy new ideas are going to fail. The smart fundraisers let other people experience the failure, then go to work on the winners.)
   
5. Nothing breeds failure faster than success. (When you find the magic, you sometimes start to believe it is the only magic, and that it will last forever.)