I want to share a quote from a book by Dan Kennedy, with you.
“… the vast majority’s interest in improving, but only if doing so requires no change, discomfort, or initiative. That’s why, in every field, a few out-earn the huge ‘mediocre majority’ by giant margins.”
Blunt, and true.
I’ve always (since the dawn of time, or at least since 2004) been advocating the end of the concept of an online marketing budget for any online business where you can measure results.
The concept of a budget is faulty and precisely opposite to the approach you should take.
Scenario A - you spend a dollar on AdWords, and get 1.20 back.
Q: What should you do?
A: BUY AS MANY CLICKS AS YOU CAN
Scenario B - you spend a dollar on AdWords, and get 0.80 back.
Q: What should you do?
A: STOP BUYING
Notice how the concept of budget doesn’t really fit in?
In fact, it’s a pure cash-flow excercise.
If you want to make the lines a little fuzzier, go ahead and apply factors such as inventory management and alternative channels. Sure, you’ll need to time your marketing right if you’re selling momentarily finite inventory like, say, hotel rooms. And, you’ll have to consider if you can attract a specific customer or customer group even less expensively in another channel, etc, etc.
But the general idea is still - if it works, do as much of it as possible. If it doesn’t work, stop doing it.
If that’s not a blinding flash of the obvious, I do not know what is - and still, there are online marketing budgets.
Be an Ocean Wave
Change and Direction in One
All follow its lead
Just finished listening to the audiobook version of Tribes by Seth Godin.
I recommend it to all future tribe leaders.
Yellow and mushy
The peel throws you off balance
Sudden change in life
I have refined the wording somewhat over the years, but the essence is the same and is quite possibly the most condensed, most brilliant and most true of all advice ever given from father to son.
So here it is, my father’s Banana Peel Theory:
‘Most things that will ever happen to you in life, you will come upon as unexpectedly as when slipping on a banana peel, so the best thing to do is to be where there are a hell of a lot of banana peels’
The Swedish version:
‘Det mesta som kommer att hända dig, kommer du att trilla in på ett bananskal på, så den enda plan du egentligen behöver är att se till att vara där det finns en jävla massa bananskal’
Now, my friends, go to where the banana peels lie.
The End.
Let’s face it - Testing scares stakeholders. After all, testing creates accountability. It removes a lot of padding that you can typically rely on in marketing:
“I didn’t know”, “how could we have known”, “no one could have guessed”
Well, perhaps no one could have guessed, but almost everyone could have tested, if they had thought about it, or knew how ….or dared.
So, we take this piece of human nature into account, and deal with it.
The most typical exampel of all is most likely the company website.
After all, what does your Google Analytics report tell you about what’s right or wrong? Why should you listen to anyone telling you that typically menus should go on the left, and images go on the right? God forbid you should do an eytracking heatmap analysis - to find out that your colorful logo does in fact actually attract the eye more than the 10p black text next to it.
No, really? Fascinating! Now what?
Compare the above happy, safe environment where nothing is really wrong and nothing is really right, to:
Creating version A and version B of your site, then watch a random population of new visitors experience these, each visitor most likely oblivious to the existance of the other version.
Now we find that version B does in fact ceteris paribus generate twice as much revenue as version A.
Let’s say you are the designer/champion of version A. This isn’t a nice, padded environment you are facing. It’s a situation where you are proven brutally wrong.
But, it’s also a situation where we’ve just found out that version B might earn your company enough money to give you a raise next year, and you’ve just been part of something hugely valuable that will help you create much better things next time.
Saying that your version stinks is also perhaps not true, perhaps it was a great result - only B was even better. Perhaps the foundation of your version A, was crucial to coming up with B. Perhaps you shouldn’t be burned at the stake after all?
Ideally, of course, you were the one ushering in this process in the company, so you worked on both versions, always communicating openly to your colleagues that no one can really tell what’s best before it’s tested.
Which is, of course, the truth.
This story about insomniac Emirates pilots just goes to show that the glass is always half empty for some.
Across a night sky
Giant planes fly silently
Pilots need coffee
Skies grow darker still
Money presses gearing up
Gold is always gold