Learning to Love Trial & Error in Marketing
One of the biggest obstacles to successful marketing is the belief that you’re supposed to get it right on the first try.
Are you holding your marketing to this standard? There is a good chance that you are if you are experiencing any of the following symptoms:
Strategy must be vetted and triple-checked before you create any content.
Nothing gets posted or published without multiple rounds of reviews and revisions that take days, weeks, or months.
If you’ve delegated content creation, you still have to review everything before anyone is allowed to move forward or post. So, whenever you’re busy, nothing goes out.
You won’t go on video unless your hair, makeup, outfit, and attitude are at 110% at least. Oh, and you have to rehearse everything 30 times before you say it.
You’re frequently disappointed by the results of your marketing and you take it real personally.
If there isn’t an immediate payoff, you tend to ghost on your marketing.
You post and publish content infrequently.
You feel overwhelmed, avoidant, anxious, and/or imposter syndrome-y when you think about marketing.
You’re reading all the articles, following all the business influencers, taking endless courses, containers, consultations, and coaching sessions… but you can’t make yourself actually show up in your marketing- even though you know what you “should” be doing.
You’re Not Going To Get It Right On Your First Try… And That Is Perfectly Alright ❤️
“I used to (and still sometimes do) put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to have everything go perfectly the first time. Still, in website design, or online marketing, or anything that other people will see, you're going to reach a point where you need those people to interact with it!
We can't anticipate every possible action that our audience could take no matter how hard we try. Testing, re-testing, trying and making adjustments is just part of the journey. I try to think of it as a chance to learn from other people's perspectives, and getting positive or useful feedback often pulls me out of that hyper-critical headspace where I'm being judgy about everyting I do!”
-Sarah Giffrow, Creative Director & Benevolent Overlord of Upswept Creative
Let me tell you right now: there is NO WAY to get your marketing right on the first try.
In fact, there is no way you could know what really resonates with your customers without giving them something to react to! You have to play with mediums, messaging, format, tone, etc. before you find the rhythm that slaps for you and gets stuck in your customers’ heads.
Marketing isn’t a pass/fail test. It’s an experiment!
It’s a creative process. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The more you can learn from customers’ responses. The more insight you’ll have to shape brilliant strategy that is right for your business and your customers.
So, let’s all just ditch the expectation that we’re supposed to get our marketing perfect on the first try, and learn to love trial and error instead.
If You’re Waiting for Perfection, You’re Waiting Too Long
“I spent most of my life as a perfectionist. What that really means is that I just never got anything done. Not all the way at least. I would spend countless hours on every tiny detail of a post, email, flyer, class plan, and then ultimately decide it wasn’t good enough and start over. I worried about what my peers would think. I worried I wouldn’t look professional enough.
My monthly newsletter turned into a yearly newsletter. My clients never knew what I had to offer until right before it came out because it took me so long to get the marketing out. I wasn’t teaching nearly as much as I wanted to.
Then, I finally embraced the idea that you have to be a bad artist before you can become a good artist. I embraced that just getting out whatever I needed to say was way more important than crafting the perfect post. My last class series was sold out every week and people loved it. They enjoyed the experience. No one once said my reel didn’t look professional enough. Getting my authentic message out and being genuinely excited about what I was offering turned out to be the most effective thing.”
-Maylani Maathai, Owner of Beija Flor Bodywork & Botanicals
To establish that coveted Know, Like, & Trust factor between customers and your brand, your brand needs to connect with customers! A lot!
They need to see your brand when they’re looking for answers to problems that you solve. They need to come across your brand in their normal internet usage, their typical scrolling, when they’re engaging in their usual communities.
So how do you show up in the right place at the right time on the internet? With a whole lot of content. And you know these algorithms keep evolving to serve up the most relevant, recent content to users. Which means: the more you post, the more likely you are to be seen. (And don’t start saying “but advertising!” Because yes, it’s easy to spend money to get eyes on your post, but if your targeting is off or your messaging is wrong- more eyes does not equal more sales.)
The best way to get to know your audience and the marketing that works for them is to do a bunch of marketing.
If you’re waiting for perfection to post, you're dooming your digital marketing strategy from the start. If you have lengthy review processes, if you absolutely cannot bear the slightest mistake or imperfection: you will not be able to publish enough content for your marketing to work.
How To Stop Trying To Be Perfect in Marketing
Get Into Mad Scientist Mode
Decide that you win if you show up and try stuff in your marketing, regardless of response. The response is just valuable information to shape your next experiment!
Mess Is Best
Take time to journal about what comes up for you when you try to do marketing but don’t.
Do you think it’s cuz you need a full beat before you go live? That you can’t have a single typo without the sky collapsing?
Then, I want you to tell yourself that it is more important for you to show up for your business than it is for you to be perfect. Feel free to write or say this as an affirmation.
Next, give yourself examples of imperfection that are still loveable to remind yourself that there is no need for you to be perfect either. Find evidence for why it’s NOT true that you need a full face of makeup to connect with people. Remember the last time you loved a business post that had the baddestest grammar ever.
Remember, you win if you show up. And perfect isn’t relatable anyway.
Chill Out On Your Review Process
Take a hard look at your review process and eliminate some steps.
For example, if you have someone posting for you, have them send you a weekly summary of what they posted, rather than having to review everything before they post it.
Or, if 3 people need to review the blog post and web copy before they go live, perhaps you could narrow it down to 1 or 2 and alternate editors. You can have quarterly group strategy meetings to review what’s working and what isn’t based on the data you’ve garnered from your posts instead.
You Won’t Know Til You Try… And Try… And Keep Trying
“It took me a long time to get out of the mindset of school and homework. I viewed marketing as homework. I would complete it once, turn it in (post it) and expect a grade. Mostly, that grade was Fail because my posts weren't landing and I wasn't willing to tweak them because I "already did the homework fuck you moving on now". It was so frustrating!! I've always been good at school, and couldn't figure out why I wasn't good at this.
Now, I'm trying to embrace trail and error in the form of conversation and connection. Posting is like an interview. You ask questions. You learn things about each other. You assess if it's a good fit or not. Move on from there. It almost feels more throwaway. It's lower effort, but higher results. When I don't grade myself, I do way better. School did not prepare me for this!”
A lot of business owners are expecting marketing to work like a microwave. In other words, low effort, quick results.
In reality, marketing is often a slow simmer. Consistent effort, long cook time- delicious, hearty results once you’ve done your part and been patient. More like a crockpot.
In other words, digital marketing tends to take a while before you’ll see a big return on investment.
From social media to search engine optimization, digital marketing experts generally don’t expect significant results until at least 6 months of consistent effort.
So, if you’re expecting every Instagram post to go viral, or to be able to post one blog and suddenly garner a ton of new followers… that’s just not realistic.
Remember, marketing builds up a lasting impression for audiences the more they see the brand, and the more they like what they see.
Don’t get lost in butt-hurt stories about how nothing you try matters if you’re not seeing high engagement right off the bat. Celebrate those 3 likes, bb! Be grateful for your (initially) small audience since there is way less pressure as you experiment and take risks.
If nothing else, do it for the lurkers. Several of my highest ticket clients had been lurking on my socials for a while- not even liking or commenting- before showing up in my DMs ready to invest thousands in my work.
Keep going. It’s a crock pot. The slow burn means it’s cooking.
How To Stay Hyped & Happy When Engagement is Slow
Math Medicine
Before you assume that your low like count means the world is against you, remember that only a small fraction of your audience will see anything you post on your social media!
In 2022, the average reach rate for Instagram is 13.51% and for Facebook it’s just 8.6%. To put that in perspective, if you have 250 followers, only about 34 people will see your post on Instagram, and only about 22 will see it on Facebook. So, the world isn’t rejecting you- only a handful of people are seeing what you’re posting!
Also, keep in mind that the average engagement by reach rates are not high either: 3.35% on Instagram and 1.4% on Facebook.
So, of those 34 people who saw the post on Instagram, if you got 2 likes… you’re actually above average. And you’re above average if you got just 1 like out of the 22 people who saw the post on Facebook!
For most of my clients feeling rejected by low like counts, when we actually look at the math, they’re often doing better than average! And when they’re not, we just get to have more fun experimenting.
Stop making social media metrics convince you you’re a failure. You’re not.
Mindset Support
It’s very normal for marketing to trigger any rejection or abandonment issues you may have.
But when you’re triggered, it’s a lot harder to show up in your marketing. When you’re triggered, it’s hard not to take low engagement rates and slow sales personally.
The best thing to do is to get mental health, mindset, and emotional support so that you don’t get lost in harmful, inaccurate stories about your worth and capabilities. I highly recommend you find a good therapist, work with a value-aligned business coach, and join a community of entrepreneurs for mutual support. Perspective and community from people who get it is invaluable.
(Could you use some marketing mindset support right now? Here are a few of my favorite podcasts.)
Self-Care
Your health is your most important marketing asset. Eat when you’re hungry, drink water, get enough sleep, let yourself rest each and every day, give your body movement, and your inner child fun. When your well is full, it’s so much easier to tune out your inner critic.
Throw Spaghetti At The Wall
“Something that I have lived by in my business and my approach to work is to 'Fail Hard, Fail Fast, and Fail Often'. Failure does not need to be negative. Failing is an opportunity to learn, grow, and build resilience. Trial and error allows you to experiment and discover new ways to reach your target audience for your business. Since starting my business in January 2021, I have changed my offers, messaging, and refined my processes through trial and error. As a result, I have increased the revenue of my business by over 800% over last year-to-date, helped my clients grow their businesses by hiring staff, expanding their offerings, and consistently exceeding their business goals."
When you let yourself embrace trial and error as a marketing strategy, there is a lot more room for play in your content creation process.
You get to try things and see what works and what doesn’t: not just for your customers, but for you too.
This means that you get to start shaping strategy around what is fun for you to create- because, usually, this is what customers connect with.
And aren’t you more likely to do something fun than something that fills you with dread? And isn’t fun a more attainable goal than perfection?
That’s right folks, fun needs to be part of your marketing strategy. That’s the best way to ensure you’ll show up as much as you need to for your marketing.
Track What Sticks
Yeah, look at engagement metrics periodically to see what content is leading to sales, DMs, link clicks, likes, comments, and shares. Make more of that kind of content.
But, also, periodically check in with what was most fun for you to make. What was easiest to do? What put you most at ease and in your element? Make more of that kind of content too. (I bet you anything you’ll see overlap between the two.)
Let. It. Cook.
OK, remember how I said your digital marketing is more crockpot than microwave and not to expect major results faster than 6 months of consistent effort?
That means you are not allowed to ghost on your marketing when you don’t see immediate results. Or your first launch isn’t awesome. Or it’s taking a while to up your follower count.
Successful marketing requires you to keep showing up, learning from what works and what doesn’t, and taking the time to let your audience not just get infatuated with your brand, but fall in love with it.
Love requires trust. Trust requires them knowing that they can count on you.
You show them you’re trustworthy by continuing to show up for them. Consistently. Reliably.
In fact, for my clients who struggle with showing up in their Instagram marketing, I like to give them a challenge to just post 3-4 reels a week for at least 3 months. They win if they show up. Response doesn’t matter. We’re not even going to evaluate how it’s going and engagement metrics until they’ve shown up consistently for 3 months. If looking at the numbers will give them anxiety, I tell them don’t look at them. We’ll go over it together once they’ve shown up consistently for three months.
If the numbers don’t tell us what we’d like then, can we ghost? Nope. We take the data from what we’ve already tried to inform how we’ll show up moving forward. Mad scientists don’t stop sciencing when their first hypothesis proves incorrect! Now their next hypothesis will be more informed.
When you embrace trial and error, you give yourself permission to always be experimenting, honing, and making your marketing ever more potent.
How To Help Yourself Trust That It’s Working
I know when you’ve got a lot riding on the success of your business, it’s hard to wait months and months before you see the fruits of your marketing efforts.
It’s important to look for signs that it’s working and allow these signs to reinforce your trust that everything is going to work out.
I’m going to borrow a beautiful metaphor from my coach Cera Byer of Intuitive Edge Coaching to illustrate this. You’re baking a cake. You buy the ingredients, mix them together, pour the batter in the pan, slide the pan in the oven, turn it on, and set a timer.
Now, right now it’s just batter, but you can trust that you did your part and the oven will take care of the rest, and in 45 minutes or so, there will be cake. Before the cake is ready for you to eat, you can take the lovely scent wafting from the oven, the pleasant heat in the kitchen, what you see when you turn on the oven light, as signs that it’s working, that cake will be ready soon. You can trust that everything is going as it should. You’re not worried. You know there will be cake.
Now, if you don’t trust that the batter will ever be cake, you might start trying to micromanage. You might keep opening the oven door to check that something is happening, letting the heat out and disturbing the batter… making it so that it will take longer for there to be cake. You might stress yourself out, convinced that all that effort was a waste and now your kitchen is a mess. Worse, you might convince yourself that the oven is broken, you didn’t do the batter right, throw the whole thing out and give up. No cake. Just cuz you didn’t let it bake.
What’s a more fun way to bake a cake? Option 1 or Option 2? What’s a more effective way to bake a cake? Option 1, obviously!
So, for marketing, find some signs that allow you to trust that there will be cake. What’s your equivalent for cake smell and warm, cozy kitchen? Allow yourself to find signs that it’s working everywhere and allow yourself to believe that it is. It’s not cheating. It’s not even woo. This is how you get in the mindset to allow yourself to experiment and show up as much as you need to in your marketing.
There Is No Way to Get This Wrong
You win if you show up in your marketing.
I hereby give you permission to believe that there is no way you can fail if you are showing up in your marketing. Yeah, you might make a mistake here and there, put your foot in your mouth, or say something that doesn’t land… But you will learn from it and adjust accordingly every time you do.
And, you might give someone hope. You might change someone’s life. You might spare someone else something painful you went through. You might change the world.
Give yourself the chance to do that. Show up.
Need some help embracing trial & error in your marketing? I’d love to be your Marketing Confidence Cheerleader. Book me for a 1:1.