The Federal government has a unique solution to every problem that it faces. It doesn’t matter if the problem is related to infrastructure, gun violence, economic issues, immigration, healthcare, or something else, the solution is the same: throw money at it.
That’s how the Federal government operates. If there is a problem, just throw more money at it.
This one-size-fits-all solution remains the same regardless of which political party is in power, and regardless of who the individual leaders are (with rare exception).
Marketers shouldn’t do that.
Don’t Just Throw More Money at Your Marketing
If a marketing department behaved like the Federal government, everyone in that department would get fired within about 2 days.
For example, let’s say your PPC budget was $10,000/month. And let’s say that after about 2 weeks you realize that your PPC campaigns were not generating very much traffic and not very many phone calls. They simply weren’t working.
The smart marketer would adjust his ad copy, he would make changes to optimize his landing pages, he would even change his bid strategy. and perhaps his overall approach. Then he would test again.
However, a marketer that was doing his best impersonation of the Federal government would behave in a different way entirely. Instead of focusing on optimization, ad copy, and bid strategy, the marketer would simply spend more.
If $10,000 didn’t work, try a PPC budget of $15,000 and see if that makes things better! Just throw more money at it. That’ll, no doubt, fix the problem.
Or, the marketer could commission several people in his department to study the PPC campaign and issue a detailed and lengthy report about what went wrong and what could improve. This finished report would, of course, be 2387 pages and would cost $8,000,000 to complete. This report would take 2 years to compile and would lay out some very expensive solutions. Of course, the marketer would ignore this report (this very expensive report) and would instead do what he wanted to do anyway. Afterall implementing a few of the changes mentioned in the report might be unpopular.
What’s the Point
These examples are ridiculous. We all shake our heads when we read examples of the Federal government throwing money indiscriminately at problems or studying an issue to death. We are often flabbergasted at the waste, inefficiency, and lack of focus that Federal programs seem to have. They look ridiculous and silly to us.
And yet sometimes we marketers behave in the same way. We fail to use web analytics and call tracking tools to measure ROI in real-time. We fail to act on information quickly enough. We even, sometimes, throw money at a problem and hope things improve. Other times we study an issue so much that information overload becomes paralyzing.
Somtimes marketers act like the federal government.
We shouldn’t. The correct formula is to test, optimize, test, optimize. This must be done with data and it must be done quickly. For example, if your call tracking data is telling you that a specific PPC campaign is only generating a few phone calls, start testing various things to improve. Don’t wait. You have the data. Act.
