September 20, 2007

If I’m Not Good At It, It Must Be Wrong

Posted by Kevin | Print This Article

So now people are talking about marketing in the tiny little association blogging world. Jason Della Rocca posted something that sounds a lot like my last couple of posts (except I don’t think “marketing” is a line item). Scott decides “traditional marketing” doesn’t work because apparently somebody is mailing out 500-page brochures to hundreds of thousands of helpless people. Tony says only an idiot would send out 500-page brochures without testing them against postcards. (I’m paraphrasing here.)

Well, they all raise good points and I don’t really want to get into too many details because frankly I’ve had a long week. However, I have to point out that the problem with Scott’s post is a problem I see all the time on ASAE listserve discussions: “If I’m not good at something, it must be inherently wrong.”

Scott says that traditional marketing = things like big brochures = isn’t there a better way? But Tony gets it right when he says marketing = figure out what works = do it = repeat.

(Of course, Scott has already said he’s not a big fan of data, so I guess we’re supposed to … I’m not sure … give in to whoever is the most sure of their convictions?)

Since I don’t really have any convictions, I’m stuck with data. And I’m willing to concede that just because I tried one thing once — and it didn’t work — doesn’t mean the thing itself is wrong. Maybe I just did it wrong. I see this all the time with email marketing, as I’ve written before. So many people think “email marketing” doesn’t work, which is absurd — they’re just not doing it right.

Scott is right on one thing — if you’re sending out 500-page brochures, whoever you are, for god’s sake stop it. That is, if you’re only doing it because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, or it’s what you’ve always done, then you should stop it. But if you’re doing it because you’ve actually tested it and have data that your audience responds much stronger to 500-page brochures than anything else, then you go right ahead and kill all the trees you want. You sure as heck don’t want to stop because some random bloggers think “WOM” sounds so much cooler.

(I feel like I’ve been picking on Scott the last few posts. Since he was the one who dragged me from the abyss, I promise to try and go easier in the future.)

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