I was listening to the morning chatter on the radio about the decision making process on whether to stick with a new TV show. The part that got my attention was the debate on how many episodes it took to decide. It settled out at between 3 and 4 episodes, depending on the nature of the show. After that point, the person was either deeply into it, or not.
Well, 3 or 4 episodes is definitely way more than 1. So why does it take so long? If the story is worth telling, it has to be developed. It takes time to create the setting, introduce the cast of characters, and develop both the storyline, and the inter-relationships between the characters. When the fuller picture is set, then it is much easier for a viewer to decide whether they find it engaging or not.
The processes that you adopt for your marketing and demand generation efforts are much the same. If you have created a plan, or a process, it takes a bit of time to decide on the effectiveness. You need to give it a chance.
But, in the desire not to throw good money after bad, many people have the mindset that they need to get to failure quickly. Or put another way, they need to find out as quickly as possible whether an initiative is working or not. And sometimes, it is perhaps too quickly. In the race to get to a yes/no answer as quickly as possible, there is a danger that efforts are short circuited.
It is something to watch out for. Going in spurts, from one type of strategy to another is in fact more likely to be most effective at nothing at all. It is simply the case that you have not provided enough time to get traction at anything. Just like when you hit the gas pedal, your wheels will spin fast, you will burn both fuel and rubber. But you will not move forward.
You need to expect that figuring things out will take time. So before you start any new endeavor or initiative, the timeframes needs to be set. That is, you need to determine how much time and resources you can apply to the endeavor. As opposed to working with a time and resource constraint that does not match up with what it takes to get traction.
How long should it take? What kind of results are expected? Is it a linear process? Can you justify and commit to this type of endeavor at all? Is there a staged approach? These are all important questions that need answers in order to choose strategies.
Many initiatives fail because people choose the wrong set of strategies for their business. Or they do not stick with the right set of strategies long enough to make them work. You marketing strategies are just like that new TV show, which may turn out to be a fabulous show, better than you ever imagined, once you got by a certain threshold.