Pattern recognition

Since there are no facts to anchor the sequence of events, liars will spend a lot of mental energy making sure the details of their story line follow a logical pattern. Real stories, however, often don’t make perfect sense, and someone telling the truth won’t worry too much about making sure all the details line up perfectly.

-Pamela Meyer, Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception

Experience tells me that when someone in service tells me “we can definitely do that for you” - it usually means the opposite.

There’s nothing definite in life, and if someone you’ve recently met is striving to tell you there is - it’s pointing to overconfidence or making up for something.

Seeing the way numbers work in the online space is similar. Certain patterns can pop up where I’ve seen the movie happen before, and it will lead to something else happening.

There’s no certainties here - but if one of them is showing it’s good cause to double and triple check something to ensure something can be done to keep your marketing on track.

So here are some “rules of thumb” that will help steer you as you find audiences and offer things with your marketing activity:

Repeating something the same way sees diminishing returns.

Doing a launch post? Great! Your first announcement will see a spike in activity and then any subsequent announcements will have less impact. The same goes for any kind of marketing activity with no significant changes or improvements. There’s still merit to doing it for some incremental gains - but know this and don’t run things into the ground.

Nothing lasts forever.

There’s a graveyard of hyper-growth startups that built huge ecommerce empires with pay-per-click advertising. A lot of them are dead, or on their way to dying. A marketer needs to continually find new channels to get their message out or they will perish. This is just as relevant for you - if you find a channel that is working - use it! But don’t stop looking for new ways to message offers to your customers - if you do, you will die.

The valley of death.

If you’re running a time-limited campaign, the bulk of your activity will happen at the start and the end. Something about it being new, and something about it finish drives gives people a greater sense of urgency. Some marketers game the system with false deadlines and countdown timers. My thoughts are - if your product needs a false push to get it over the sales line, you’re probably not going to be in business for long.

Sidebar: I learned this happens in the research world as well - philanthropists and politicians love funding research at the start and at the end - but there’s a long period where it’s really hard to get money for the expensive and long middle part.

Sense-check numbers that are too good to be true.

They often are. A good number of clicks to impressions is between 1-1 out of 1,000 (0.10% to 5%).

A good number of people viewing an offer and purchasing is anything from 1 out of 2 or 3 up to 1 out of a 100.

If someone is telling you they’re doing better than 10% - check those numbers yourself.

If something is doing better than 50% - either something about your set up is broken and not recording or your product is beyond wildest expectations popular.

The numbers can be much worse than this - and usually means your activity stinks and is not resonating with your audience at all. Back to learning more about them and making sure your product fits.

A small and engaged audience beats a large number of unknowns every single time.

Bigger isn’t always better. You’re much more likely to succeed with communities, specialists, or local audiences than you are putting your logo up on a billboard. It’s more efficient and much more likely to lead to qualified sales. Niche appeal over broad yawns.