Girl, I’ve got a hard truth to share.
Even when you take the most strategic approach to your brand and marketing, strategies sometimes fail.
You can set clear goals, outline the steps you need to take to achieve them, and take those necessary actions — and still, you might not actually see the success you’d hoped for.
But what does it really mean for a strategy to fail or succeed?
Let’s take a look at different ways to measure success, and how to learn from those so-called failures you might face.
How do you measure success?
It’s easy to call a project or marketing campaign (or even a whole damn business) a failure if you’re gauging success by one primary measure: sales.
I get it, you can’t run a business without sales.
But sales is not the only measure of success that matters — or, it certainly doesn’t have to be.
You should also be looking at:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Email sign-ups
- Follows on social media
- Referrals
- Click-throughs
- Website traffic
- Reviews
I run through content marketing metrics in more detail in another blog post, but on a high level, this list should tell you something important: sales isn’t the only way to measure success, and you should be looking at different metrics to gauge how things are going.
WTF do these metrics tell you?
You can measure all the right things, but if you don’t know how to learn from those metrics, they won’t do you much good. And sometimes, it’s not so black and white.
Let’s take an example of a marketing campaign that gets really good reach and impressions, but very few conversions.
Does that mean you should scrap that strategy and try something else? Likely not.
Good reach and impressions might tell you you’re doing something right in terms of giving the algorithm what it wants to show people. And, as much as I think most of would love to say “f*** the algorithm!” we can’t really do that if we want our posts to show up in people’s feeds.
But, we can go a layer deeper and say, “Okay, so this worked for the algorithm, but it’s not quite hitting the mark if it’s not getting my audience to take the actions I want them to take.”
What can you learn from that?
Maybe it’s just a matter of tweaking the caption or CTA, or testing out different ways to post it to your stories. There are small ways to A/B test and see what lands better with your audience, while still satisfying the algorithm.
What does it mean for a strategy to fail?
Every campaign, email, product launch, or social media post is an opportunity to learn and test out what works to help you achieve your goals.
In that way, no strategic initiative can really be called a failure — even if it doesn’t accomplish the goals you initially set out.
The only real strategy failure is not having one at all.
Do you know how common it is for businesses (of any size, really, but especially small businesses) to launch a new product or put out a social media campaign without giving any thought to their goals, audience, metrics, or any other parts of a strategic approach?
So. Damned. Common.
If you’re starting with a clear strategy, you’re setting yourself up for success — and for the ability to learn from each initiative even if it doesn’t achieve what you wanted it to.
When it’s time to pivot
I stand by what I just said, that “the only real strategy failure is not having one at all.”
…but that doesn’t mean you never need to really pivot what you’re doing.
While it’s true that you should be looking at a lot more metrics than just sales, no business can survive without sales.
If you’re not converting enough business, it’s time to look at all those different metrics and how and why they aren’t moving the needle forward on your goals. Then, it’s time to examine things more deeply.
When things aren’t gelling, it could be:
- Your brand is not strong or clear enough (or isn’t positioned to attract your ideal customers)
- Your product offering isn’t what your audience wants
- Your communication style needs work
- You’re solving the wrong problem
- Your website is difficult to navigate and tanking your conversions
- Or, any number of other things
If you’re struggling to grow your customer base and you’re not clear on your overarching strategy yet, grab our Bold Brand Blueprint to start mapping yours out (and we’re here to help if you get stuck!). Getting clear on your strategy and brand must come before anything else — or you’ll never even know if you’ve succeeded or failed!