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June 16, 2020

The Best Marketing Strategy? “Try It and See!”

While there have been a few remakes over the years… many of us remember the very first Life Cereal commercial featuring ‘Mikey’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgB25WBeBxA) which debuted in 1990. It features a couple of young brothers who didn’t know what to expect from a new breakfast cereal their parents gave them. So, they pass it on to their little brother, Mikey, who – to no one’s surprise – tries it and likes it!

Fast-forward to May 2020. After delivering a webinar on email marketing a few weeks ago, one of the participants reached out to me afterward with a few ideas he had about his email marketing efforts. After outlining his plan, he asked, “What are your thoughts?” To which I immediately replied, “Well, try it and let’s see what happens.”

Like trying something new at breakfast, when it comes to marketing, we can’t know – for sure – if something will work. And certainly, not to what degree. Unless we try it!

Yes, we should me measuring what we do… and a history of measurement will help us to better understand trends and likely outcomes, but we can never be certain.

And when it comes to trying a marketing tactic for the very first time, not only can we not be certain of the outcome… our assumptions going into it could be off by 180o.

That is, the only way to know for sure if an idea will work is to ‘try it and see what happens.’ And not just ‘try’… but test, measure and discover what works and what doesn’t. Then, as you learn from the metrics, continually adjust and tweak as you move forward.

Here’s an example… let’s say you decide to do some digital advertising in the Quirk’s Daily eNewsletter. Great!

So, you create and post your ad. But virtually no one clicks on it. Does that mean that advertising in the Quirk’s Daily eNewsletter doesn’t work? Of course not. The lack of response could have been due to any one (or more) of several factors:

  • A headline that didn’t draw readers in
  • Body copy that didn’t resonate with readers
  • A layout & design that wasn’t eye-catching
  • Your firm is new and people just don’t know you yet
  • And so on and so on

The fact is, until you starting testing and learning, you’ll never be sure. That is… you have to ‘try’ it.

So, go and try something new! But make sure you build in some measurement metrics. And while you will never be able to predict – with absolute certainty – how a particular marketing tactic will perform, you will start to get a sense of trends and learn what kinds of things work best (for you)… so that, over time, you’ll be able to maximize your marketing outcomes, as well as the ROI of your efforts.

Thanks for the advice, Mikey!

 


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