If we have little or no experience with marketing, we tend to be in a state of ‘unconscious incompetence’, i.e., we don’t know what we don’t know. As we start to learn, we reach a transition point called ‘conscious incompetence’, i.e., we start to become aware of what it is we don’t know, but we don’t actually know the answers yet. This can be a confusing time for clients. But it can also be a challenging time for me as a consultant, because the client starts to question everything and might also start to change systems we’ve set in place. This often happens because someone else (perhaps a webmaster or other technician) has given them some new information or they’ve read an article somewhere that seems to contradict my advice.
When this happens, I sometimes receive panic-stricken and confused emails from my clients asking loads of questions as to why I’m doing something a certain way when they’ve heard someone else tell them to do it another way. This can result in me spending a lot of time writing out a reply, carefully explaining the ‘why’ of my strategies. While their panic might feel like ‘fear of the unknown’ to them, it’s important for them to understand that it’s actually happening because they’re moving from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. But while they are no longer ignorant of their ignorance, they have not yet moved into competence.
At this point, the quality of the relationship between us becomes crucial to our success together. Unless the client trusts me, they will be likely to start to change the systems we’ve put in place. I’ve seen clients at this point think we are moving too quickly and switch off all the automation systems we’ve put in place, only to wonder why the traffic declines on their sites. I’ve seen others think we’re not moving fast enough, so they spend money on purchasing Twitter or Facebook followers and then wonder why they have no engagement in their ‘cloud’ or why their Twitter account has hit a brick wall.
Bottom line: Being flexible in marketing is a great personal quality to have, but trying everything all at once is just plain UNSCIENTIFIC. To implement a strategy, you need to allot it a period of time to get underway, so you can accurately assess its effectiveness. If you ditch it or add another strategy to it too soon, you have no way of knowing whether or not it was working.
Monitor and Analyse Your Stats
Whether launching a book or building an Internet marketing platform, statistics are crucial information for assessing progress. During a book launch campaign, I’m primarily looking at registrations and sales rankings. During platform building, I’m looking at Twitter follower numbers, blog traffic, page rank, Alexa rank, inbound links, etc. During platform growth, I’m looking at the mailing list, product development, sales and partnerships. Without this information, how can I possibly know if what I’m doing is working? Yet remarkably few of my new clients are aware of their statistics.
Of course, statistics are just numbers. While they brother cell phone list us what, they don’t really tell us why. For example, if your blog stats suddenly take a dip and then go back up again, you’d have to look at all possible reasons for the dip. Did your web server go down? Were your social media systems down? Was it due to the content (or lack of content) during that period? Was it during a holiday (or the World Cup, as has been going on this month)?
Conversely, if you see a spike in activity
You have to ask similar questions. Was it due to producing a better quality (or greater quantity) of content? Did you change the topic of your content? Were you more active on social media? Did you change the day of publication? Did a lot of people share your article that day? Did someone mention your article on their website?
Bottom line: Take responsibility for knowing your statistics. Take your stats monthly, and watch for patterns. Don’t just look at the numbers; try to see deeply into them and understand the context. Only then will you be able to get a picture of what’s really going on in your business.