Why should you embrace marketing failures?
Someone once told me that Marketing is a combination of data and mad science that meets somewhere in the middle.
It requires analyzing past and current trends to help project what’s going to happen in the future. Since none of us can hop in our DeLorean and hit 88mph to see what the future has in store for us, we have to take some calculated risks.
Once you have your latest and greatest marketing idea and decide to launch your campaign you need to carefully monitor your efforts and make adjustments as you go along. There is no cookie-cutter formula that can be applied to all industries and scenarios that will keep your brand competitive.
Marketing is a monster that requires constant care and attention.
If you have done your due diligence and determined that the calculated risk yields an acceptable reward you should be fine.
However, from time to time a good idea can turn bad real quick. If you touch a hot stovetop you get burned and quickly know that was a bad idea and react accordingly. You also now know that you shouldn’t touch a hot stovetop.
There is action, reaction, data points, and conclusion.
Action: Touching a hot stovetop
Reaction: Removing your hand from the hot stovetop
Data Point: Touching a hot stove causes pain and is a bad idea
Conclusion: Don’t touch a hot stovetop
When things don’t go as planned you have a few options. You can get angry and stomp your feet or you can accept it and use it as a data point for your next mad science experiment.
Without these data points, successes, and failures, we have a much more difficult time making education decisions and calculating the risk to reward ratio. Building a catalog of past experiences, situations, and efforts gives you the tools you need to hone your marketing skills and create strategies for conversions that are based on data.
Failure teaches us what not to do next time.
Sometimes we scrap the entire campaign and other times we only need to make adjustments to yield a positive result. When a campaign fails it is critical to ask why it failed. If we don’t ask “Why?” we are likely to fail again when small adjustments could have made the campaign a success.
Marketing is all about taking chances and trying to attract business in a way that has not been done before. It is your opportunity to set your brand apart from all the others in your industry.
Embrace your marketing failures, pick yourself back up, and use what you have learned to project your brand forward.
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