Increase your chances of success with marketing win-wins

Happy Labor Day! This edition’s dedicated making the most of your marketing labors.

Ask this question when evaluating a marketing idea: what happens if you don’t accomplish your primary goal?

If you try something and it doesn’t achieve the main thing you’re aiming for, is there any residual value in the time, energy and money you put into the effort?

First instance, let’s say you create a bunch of blog posts to try and improve your SEO. If your search rankings don’t move, was the effort wasted? 

If you created articles that are actually helpful for your customers, then you at least have valuable assets that could improve conversion rates and customer satisfaction, or maybe even serve as training material for new employees.

I call this a marketing win-win. Nothing in marketing is guaranteed to work, so you’re at least giving yourself more of a chance to succeed. Best case scenario, you accomplish multiple goals with one effort.

Another example is a customer follow-up call after a sale or service. Whether you’re an electrician, a retailer, a hotel, etc., there’s no downside to having customer service reach out a week or two later and make sure everything went well.

Even without a pitch or request, it either a) gives the customer a good feeling that could lead to a referral or positive review, or b) it prevents a bad review and gives you a chance to make something right. 

There’s no reason not to do it, except dedicating the time to do it.

The antithesis of a win-win is usually some kind of hack. For instance, generating lots of keyword-stuffed, AI slop articles. If your only goal is improving SEO, and no one would actually read or use any of these articles, then there’s no value if it doesn’t change anything.

In fact, in just the past few weeks Google updated its algorithm to filter out this type of spam. The only value those efforts would’ve had is now reduced or nullified.

So, the next time you consider trying something, ask how many different ways it could help your business. At least start with the ideas that offer the most chances to win.