Not everything is predictable

“Precision is predictable and therefore reproducible; you can be significantly more confident taking action with insights from precise data.

To translate this concept into our target metaphor: if you know where the shot will land every time you fire, you can predict what will happen when you fire the next shot.

Unfortunately, most of us focus obsessively on accuracy. It’s good to want accuracy, but it is more important to balance costs and benefits.”

• Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

It’s human nature to want to create order from chaos. Accountants like to see money go in, and more money come out. Bosses like their team to show up, and do productive work. Marketers like to create things, and grow the business.

It’s rarely that simple.

You can prepare yourself and know the numbers, but there’s always going to be parts of what you do that are unpredictable.

Sometimes an offer is mentioned somewhere unknown and a big fat order comes in. Other times a well-thought out campaign is planned and repeated the following year and flops.

It’s hard to prepare for the unexpected boons so don’t try. I’m also wary of simply “increasing budget” to get more of the same outcome.

Marketing is a game of a balance. Which includes constantly noticing what’s working, and finding more ways to do it, while gently letting go of things that no longer work, or something you’ve tried and tested but are no longer seeing success with.

This is why Notice is such an important part of your playbook. It’s a constant - there’s always more to learn about your customers, where they are, who services them, where you can find them, and what they think and feel about.

This also applies to what you do, how you speak to them, for how long and whether what you’re doing is useful and engaging to them.

The goal of noticing isn’t to predictably do 10 things each month and get 30 customers, it’s to develop a sense of what trends well and what trends out over time. When something pops you’re keen to understand the details why, and when something is drifting or not working, you can scale up and down the priority ladder to zero in on what can be improved.

The learning never stops.

I used to believe Facebook ads were junk and YouTube was solely for cat videos. I’m seeing TikTok usage on the rise and wondering if that’s a good thing.

By noticing what’s working and being open to learning it - you remove your reliance on any one particular platform and future-proof your business and your marketing efforts.