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Do more of what’s working.
It sounds obvious, right? But sometimes, we’re so busy chasing the next to-do, the next big idea, that we don’t even think about this approach. And if you’re still figuring out how to market your business, you might not even know what “works.”
So, let’s discuss running some experiments, adapting, and doubling down. That’s where some fun things can start to happen quickly.
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Fail Fast in Marketing to Find What Works
Marketing is part experimentation; you need to think of yourself as a bit of a mad scientist.
Instead of over-planning at the beginning of your campaigns, start with small tests to see what works for your business.
This "fail fast" approach, popular in startups, helps you quickly adapt based on real feedback rather than pouring time and money into ideas that may not deliver.
Check out this Agile Academy quote and take a minute to digest it.
To fail fast means to have a process of starting work on a project, immediately gathering feedback, and then determining whether to continue working on that task or take a different approach—that is, adapt. If a project is not working, it is best to determine that early on in the process rather than waiting until too much money and time has been spent.
Now, let’s turn this concept into action.
How to Fail Fast in Marketing Your Business
Pick something. Begin with a quick experiment—a small email campaign, a Google Ad, a price test, or a short product demo. But whatever you do, don’t get bogged down in planning and go too far with a big idea before you test something.
For example, rather than mapping out a couple of months' worth of YouTube videos about your business, record several videos immediately and launch them all in one day or over a week. You could do the same thing with blog posts.
If you have six videos or blog posts, you can release one or two daily from Monday to Thursday in a single week, or you could go much slower and release one weekly. The first option lets you fail fast and adapt right away.
Study the data for this batch of videos or posts. See which generates views, which people spend the most time viewing, and which sends new leads to your website.
If video or blog posts aren’t what you want to do, find something like this for your business and choose the fail-fast version rather than something that will tie you down for hours before you even know if it might move the needle.
Next, it’s time to double down.
Double Down on Successes
When you find something that clicks, go all in.
If you record a large batch of videos like the example above, look for interesting occurrences as you study the data. For example, videos on specific topics may drive more leads to your website than others.
Now, you can double down and record several more videos on topics related to the ones that drive the most leads to your website. If these do well, too, keep going. If they don’t, go back to your data and adapt. Run another experiment and follow what works.
This is failing fast. If you’d released videos slowly over many months, determining which topics gained the most traction would have taken you much longer.
Experiment. Test. Fail Fast. Adapt Where Necessary. Double Down.
If you have questions about this, just hit reply, and it will go right to me.
Thanks for reading. I’ll talk with you again next Sunday.
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