Connection, not perfection, is the goal.
Most marketing departments strive for perfection, to make every piece of content as perfect as possible. But perfection is impersonal, un-human, easy to filter out. To make a connection you need to act like what you are – human. (Even imperfections and stuff-ups can work to your advantage if you use them as an opportunity to connect with your audience on a human-to-human level.)
It is easy to ignore marketing but hard to ignore people.
The human brain gets bombarded daily with marketing content. We are all adept at only noticing the things that seem relevant. We all have a “marketing filter”, a subconscious switch that filters marketing out of our experience of the world. Great marketing breaks through this filter; and it most often does this by connecting at a human-to-human level.
Whenever you create a piece of marketing content ask the question: would I filter this if it wasn’t mine? Is there something human about the content I’ve just made?
Be small.
Start-ups have the ability to appear like a small band of humans figuring it out as they go along because that’s what they are. Big companies can’t do that. That’s the advantage you need to learn to use.