You know that thing you did… the one that didn’t work?

No, I don’t know about it exactly. I just know I have a few things I’ve done that didn’t work and assumed you had at least one too.

So why didn’t your last commercial/coupon/event/blog post/insert-thing-here work?

You took the ‘doing homework’ shortcut by surveying your friends and not your customers.

Whatever you do, don’t ask your friends what they think of your idea. Because they will say your new haircut is awesome, right?

Your website, much like my asymmetrical haircut may have been cool... back in the 90s.

Me in the 1990s. You’re welcome.

Your friends will lie to your face because they love you. Before you pour a lot of time and money into something, you need some unbiased, ideally stranger, opinions. It’ll probably be more involved (re: expensive) than asking your friends over pizza but it’s better than the money you lose chasing a bad idea, right?

(A great way to get some feedback if you are shy is to use paid ads like Facebook or Google to test messages. This is part of what paid ads are for!)

You already tried it before and it didn’t work that time either.

Sometimes we really really want something to work. But it doesn’t.

So think “Is this like that time I…?” And if it is, and if that time things didn’t go so well, there better be a lot more about it that is different than what it has in common with your last mediocre (or terrible) initiative.

You can tell people to pivot over and over... but that couch still won't get up the stairs.

You can tell people to pivot over and over… but that couch still won’t get up the stairs.

You didn’t tell enough people about it.

Let’s say you think email is amazing. Well, your customers are tweeting, Facebooking, pinning, tumbling, blogging, and doing all kinds of other technological and non-technological ‘ings’ to get their information. So the more ways you get the word out and the bigger your audience, the better this is going to go.

noonecametoyourparty-grumpycat

You picked a bad time.

Let’s say you’re OKCupid and part of your coverage area is experiencing devastating floods with thousands of people stranded. Not a good time to say…

okcupidcoloradofloods




 

Sometimes your idea is good but it’s badly timed. If you did all your homework, tried something new, and told a lot of people, this is probably at play.

So truthfully, was your last bad idea one of these things? And do you have a tendency of repeating any of these patterns?

Need marketing help?

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