If you want to make better marketing decisions, you may find today’s post really useful. It’s all about something I call bad numbers.
Allow me to explain!
Bad numbers = Bad data
Imagine you wanted to know what the average small business owner thought about social media. If you asked that question via a poll on something like Facebook or Twitter, the results would be inaccurate and potentially damaging.
Why?
Because you would not be asking the average small business owner! You would be asking the average small business owner, who already uses social media. That group would give a very different response, than you would get from a true, random sample of small business owners. Any decisions you made based on that data would be based on bad numbers.
Everyone says…
I spoke with a fellow blogger recently, who changed the size of the font he used on his blog, because; “everyone said the font size was too big.” When I checked it out, everyone was actually just 3 people who commented on his blog. The first person said that he found the font size was a little large, then 2 of their friends said that they thought it was on the large side too. This guy gets around 300 unique visitors a day, so he based his decision on a flawed group of just 1% of his readership! After making the change, he immediately saw the average time people spent on his site drop by 15%. He has now reverted back to the original size font and has regained that 15% again.
Before you make a business decision based on numbers, it’s extremely important that the data you are working with is good. This means you need to be able to rely on the quality of the data and the size of the data sample, needs to be statistically relevant too.
For example, I spoke with the owner of a new, London based accountancy practice a few years ago. He told me that his last mail shot provided a zero response rate. As a result, he said he was no longer going to use mail shots as part of his marketing mix. I looked at the letter he used, and it was actually pretty good (for a change.) I then asked where he got the database that he used for the mailing, and it was one of the world’s leading suppliers of databases.
I then asked how many letters he sent. Here was his reply: “We sent 12 letters out, because we got 12 contact names and addresses for free, to evaluate the database they wanted to sell us.” He was basing his decision that mail shots did not work, on a mailing to just 12 people!
Before you make any decisions with your marketing, make sure you are basing those decisions on good numbers.
IMPORTANT: If you want to make more sales, boost your profits and grow an amazing business, this will help you!