When’s the Right Time for Making a Change?
We all know the basic laws of physics: Things in motion tend to stay in motion; things at rest tend to stay at rest. It’s easy to fall into a groove and get comfortable. It’s harder to figure out if the things we’re used to are actually working for us. That requires introspection, research, and change. Yuck!
But we also know that change is often necessary—and it can reap tremendous reward.
The question is: When is the right time for making a change? How do you know?
In marketing, that question is a little easier to answer than it is in other areas of our lives.
That’s because we put controls in place when we start new campaigns or take on new projects.
We identify our goals, of course. But along the way to reaching those goals, we stop and look at our progress. For those periodic check-ins, we already know what “good” or “bad” performance looks like, because we’ve previously established an acceptable range.
(Pro tip: Ranges are vital so we don’t get locked into a rigid idea of what success looks like!)
For example: If your goal is to sell 100 new cars by the end of the year, your range might be to generate 15-30 inquiries or offers per quarter based on your new campaign.
And then we implement our “control process,” which is the steps we take to measure, and close, the distance between our intended outcomes and what we actually achieved.
Back to our example: If our new car campaign only generated 14 leads in the first quarter? That’s when changes need to be made in order to get us back on track. It would be easy to say “not too bad” and hope for better numbers next quarter; but our control process doesn’t allow us to rest on our laurels.
(How do we know which changes to make? A great theme for another newsletter!)
Defining these ranges, and the timeline during which we’ll check in on our progress, is how we pinpoint the need for change. And it means that we’re consistently on track to delivering our goals for every project, all the time.
But it also means that we don’t have to be perfect all the time—there’s room to get creative, to experiment, and to adjust. Because marketing is a human art. And we accept that there will be a need to periodically change course.
Learning how—and when—to implement change is part of the mastery of marketing. To build this approach into your strategy, and stay on the path to success, reach out to Mad 4 Marketing.
