With all that you’re doing to grow, and promote, and improve, and market your startup…do you know how well you’re doing?
Sure, people are visiting, and leads are coming in, and you’re acquiring users, but how are the results panning out?
Even when things are going well (or not), we need to assess our progress compared to…ourselves. This isn’t to make ourselves feel bad or create fun marketing headaches or beat ourselves up (which in marketing we’ll do no matter what), but it is to see our progress and start asking ourselves questions to better realize what we want to achieve and get at it.
Have I improved from last week? If Yes, what was changed? If not, what brought on the decline?
Are the results this week distinguishable from two weeks ago? What has changed so much? and what brought on this change?
If the progress displays a positive trajectory, then we should try to find out what brought it on and what can we do to rinse, repeat, duplicate, and improve. Or if we’re seeing a downward spiral, then what was done differently to cause it, and how do we avoid it.
Sometimes we may realize it was a fluke, or a seasonal change, or a technical issue, or bug, or something that randomly happened without our doings.
Whatever the reason, doesn’t it interest you what happened, so you can learn from it and improve to get better? Shouldn’t you adopt a ‘Yes, and’ approach to accept what happened and adapt accordingly?
This ongoing optimization mentality is a constant in marketing; sometimes it’s euphoric and sometimes it’s painful, yet often it’s more than helpful.