The following is an excerpt taken from “The Automatic Marketing Machine”, written by RJon Robins and Danny Decker.
A sure sign of an amateur marketer is that they spend a LOT of time debating matters of preference.
“I think it looks better in blue.”
“I think it sounds better this way.”
“I think we should use this graphic instead.”
The right way to make these types of decisions is by testing, measuring, and then making a data-based decision.
Some of the highest-performing marketing campaigns either of us have ever run have been UGLY! Ugly ads, ugly landing pages.
And if we had just let our subjective preferences dictate, we would have replaced them with something prettier – but because we track and measure data, we were able to determine that the ugly landing page was actually out-performing the “prettier” pages we split-tested against.
Be very, very careful not to let “feelings” or “preferences” dictate your marketing decision-making process.
When someone on your marketing team asks you “do you think we should do it this way or should we try it this way instead,” your response should generally be “Let’s test them both and see what works better!”
Your team’s opinion doesn’t matter. Your own opinion doesn’t matter. The opinions of your friends, your family and your colleagues definitely don’t matter. The only “opinions” that matter are those of your audiences and they indicate their decisions through their trackable, measurable actions.
Opinions don’t matter. Personal preferences don’t matter. Performance matters. Stick to the facts and make sure your team does, too.
