7th grade science class. I don’t remember the teacher, but a group of preteen boys, bunsen burners and lab equipment. It was fun if not a little dangerous. Ok it was just dangerous – we did a lot of things that we should not have been doing!
For people who own their own business, marketing can often bring on this nagging feeling they are not doing the right things to market their business? With an every expanding list of ways to market, it can be confusing. Most people now think of marketing with a sense of fear or inadequacy, but it can actually be a lot more fun.
The key to marketing – start working in the lab
Marketing is constantly changing, this is not new but the speed of change has accelerated. The good news is that most of the new ways to market your business are all trackable, and when things are trackable, it gives you the opportunity to test and experiment. Testing and experimenting helps you measure your efforts and identifies what works and what doesn’t.
Branding is easier to think about
Marketing and experimenting might sound a bit more scary, but there is an easier way to approach the situation. Marketing is about selling your brand and branding is all about experiences. Think about the experiences people have with your business and ask yourself, what experience can I modify AND easily track? Now you are ready to experiment.
A real life example
One of our clients 2016 goalsis to aggressively grow their house list. In the first two months we have implemented two tactics. One tactic was to take the most popular pages and add pop-up windows. We quickly discovered that even though all pages had traffic only one page was getting traction with the pop-up window. It was gathering 3x the number of names as the other two and one of the two has yet to get a single response. Now we are on the second iteration and took the lower performing option and changed the offer.
Start somewhere
I often don’t see magic bullets – the one change that dramatically moved the needle – but what I do see is that small steps get you moving. We approach every project big or small with the question: How will we know if this is successful? If you are asking that question you will find a way to measure it and soon you can break out the bunsen burner and start smoking up the room
Get more ideas on how to experiment with our 17 SEO Myths you Should leave Behind in 2016.