How Do You Know?
“The plural of anecdote is not data.”
I ran across this quote on Brad Feld’s blog, Feld Thoughts, recently. I like it so much that if I were the type I’d have it made into a tattoo. Its origin is complicated so I’ll just send you here if you want to read about it. I’d rather talk about what makes this quote so applicable to marketing.
It is fantastically easy – even natural – to take our personal experiences and/or that of others and turn them into “fact”. Especially when people are complaining to or complimenting us.
We’re all guilty of it. Two or three people tell us they can’t find something on our new website and suddenly “our website is confusing everyone”.
A sales rep has trouble getting new prospects to take his call and declares “the marketing campaign is a waste – we’re not getting any leads.”
The company owner has a conversation with his buddies about how much spam they’re getting and decides that email marketing doesn’t work.
A couple of customers complain that the user conference costs too much and now we need to lower the price.
And so on.
Some of these “facts” may actually be true. But they also may be false and we’re not going to know which it is without asking the right questions. Who among us doesn’t know that taking action without having the real facts could be a big mistake?
Whenever you hear declarations similar to the above, it’s wise to ask the following:
-How do you know?
-Have you measured it?
-Is this truly representative?
-Do you really want to act on it?
If there’s anything I’ve learned in 2 ½ decades of working with engineers, it’s that you need to test and measure, and measure enough for it to count.
Technorati Tags: marketing, technology marketing, lead generation
This article was first published October 16, 2007 on the Tatum Marketing blog
“The plural of anecdote is not data.”
I ran across this quote on Brad Feld’s blog, Feld Thoughts, recently. I like it so much that if I were the type I’d have it made into a tattoo. Its origin is complicated so I’ll just send you here if you want to read about it. I’d rather talk about what makes this quote so applicable to marketing.
It is fantastically easy – even natural – to take our personal experiences and/or that of others and turn them into “fact”. Especially when people are complaining to or complimenting us.
We’re all guilty of it. Two or three people tell us they can’t find something on our new website and suddenly “our website is confusing everyone”.
A sales rep has trouble getting new prospects to take his call and declares “the marketing campaign is a waste – we’re not getting any leads.”
The company owner has a conversation with his buddies about how much spam they’re getting and decides that email marketing doesn’t work.
A couple of customers complain that the user conference costs too much and now we need to lower the price.
And so on.
Some of these “facts” may actually be true. But they also may be false and we’re not going to know which it is without asking the right questions. Who among us doesn’t know that taking action without having the real facts could be a big mistake?
Whenever you hear declarations similar to the above, it’s wise to ask the following:
- How do you know?
- Have you measured it?
- Is this truly representative?
- Do you really want to act on it?
If there’s anything I’ve learned in 2 ½ decades of working with engineers, it’s that you need to test and measure, and measure enough for it to count.
Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Conversion Optimization, Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum