“The good thing about hitting rock bottom, there’s only one way left to go and that’s UP!”
I’m sure you’ve heard this saying a lot, but there’s a lot more (scientific) truth to it than its motivation-guru-selling-online-courses phrasing.
In this blog post, I’m going to explain how to avoid errors following the failure of a marketing campaign (which includes everything from full-fledged multichannel campaigns to a small Instagram ad you decided to take a chance on).
Thank you Ludacris, very cool!
I’m going to start with a short personal story.
I don’t consider myself the best at math, but I was always a high scorer in exams. In math, I usually scored anywhere between 90-95. This story is about a discrepancy between my prelim and my final exam scores.
Here's 10th Grade Kunal LMAO
For those not familiar with 10th board exams, they’re always preceded by “prelim” exams conducted and graded by schools themselves. The math prelim exam was a pleasant surprise for me, because I left the exam hall feeling very confident. Turns out, I scored a 100 on that test.
My parents and teachers were delighted, for obvious reasons, and they now expected me to get the same result on the actual board exam. Come June, it was finally time for my board results, and I ended up with a 98 in math.
“Oh, you just got overconfident.”
“You must not have studied as hard this time.”
These are the (unsolicited) comments I got on my board results, but if you promise not to tell my parents, here’s the truth: I never studied for either of those tests. I have always regarded exams as the worst measure of anyone’s learning, and so I never gave them any of my respect or attention. Now, this is not an article about my opinions on the Indian education system, but this story is important to the argument of this article.
We humans are not programmed to think statistically. We always tend to exaggerate the situation, whether good or bad. Your failed campaign very likely got you down in the dumps, but that kind of thinking is harmful not just to you, but also to your next marketing efforts. The truth is far from what you think.
For example, in the case of the math exam results, people just thought I studied lesser, and I don’t blame them for thinking so. It intuitive: the more I study, the more I score. It’s a fact that’s easy to digest, and thus easy for the human mind to make sense out of (for more on the topic, I suggest reading Thinking Fast, and Slow by Daniel Kahneman). In your case, you may think you didn’t time your post right, or maybe you used the wrong channel.
Zomato faced a lot of backlash for this, but was it a failure?
The reality, though, is that every measure of success (be it marks, sales, or any other KPI you chose) is a function of not only factors like studying, timing, or choosing the right channel, but also luck (or what we statistically call a random error). If you looked at my previous scores, which as I said tended to be in the low 90s, you would’ve predicted my final grade to be 93 or so. The only reason I got a 100 is because I was simply lucky that day. In fact, I was lucky to even score 98 on the final. Perhaps I had an easier grader, or I was just feeling more fresh that morning.
You can find similar trends in sports. Athletes and teams have terrible seasons, followed by great spells, and vice versa (read more on the Sports Illustrated Curse here). You’ve likely had a successful marketing effort in the past, only to have so called failures. The random error, or your luck, will keep fluctuating, but we tend to attribute causes to every one of these swings, even when there may not be one.
Where is Conor McGregor now? (Answer: He's 1W-3Ls since this edition of SI was published)
Exceptional performances are followed by “worse” results, and the only way to go after rock bottom is up. In statistics, we call this Regression to the Mean.
Regression to the mean (RTM) is a statistical phenomenon that can make natural variation in repeated data look like real change. It happens when unusually large or small measurements tend to be followed by measurements that are closer to the mean.
Thus, to avoid mistakes in evaluating your campaign, you need to pair your intuitive judgement (“I used the wrong channel”) with the typical results you and similarly sized competitors get*. Don’t ignore your opinion on why the campaign failed (I’m assuming you’re a fairly smart person. After all, you are reading our blog!) but always assign more weight to the average, and only then will you get a reasonably accurate evaluation of your campaign.
*If Coca-Cola perceived success by comparing its campaign to that of a local brewery in your hometown, the CMO would have a huge payday for no logical reason whatsoever.
You naturally move towards the mean after an exceptional/disastrous performance
One campaign is never enough to make/break your brand. Based on the concept of Regression to the Mean, there are two ways to succeed:
1) Improve your Mean
This means that you need to expand your marketing efforts beyond one-off campaigns and focus on integrating all your communications for improving your core offer, or simply put, for improving your 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion; read more here). This tasks involves consistent branding across the board and thus requires expertise in marketing. Agencies like LIIT help business like yours take their core offer to the next level.
2) Reduce Variation
You can’t control the random error entirely, but you should aim to control as much as possible. Modern digital marketing tools make it easier for business owners to control many factors that were traditionally impossible to work with, all with the help of basic data analytics. Pairing this with point 1) will create what I would call a perfect marketing campaign.
Be it an athlete’s performance, the economy or your business’s marketing campaign, all are inevitably subject to swings, and a lot of this variation is explained by luck/random errors. The only truth here, at least according to statistics, is that performance, whether up or down, will always move towards the mean.
When we, at LIIT, generate reports detailing the execution of marketing campaigns we create for our clients (Step 5 of Our Process), we always take relevant statistical ideas such as the one presented in this blog into account.
Want us to create the best campaign for your business?
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