Social Media Marketing

Baby Steps

Jerry L. Kennedy | TLT Social Media Marketing February 2016

When it comes to digital marketing, don’t be afraid to try something new.

Babies have a lesson to offer marketers—if something isn’t working, create a different approach.
© Can Stock Photo Inc. / master1305

YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED THAT MY LAST COLUMN WAS A REPRINT FROM AN EARLIER TLT COLUMN. There’s a very good reason for that: twin baby girls. They were born in May, and I took over taking care of them full time when my wife went back to work in September. The thinking was that I could work from home; the reality is that work gets tucked between diaper changes, feedings, walks and naps, and not as much of it gets done as I would like. Fortunately, I have a very supportive business partner who has picked up a tremendous amount of slack and made sure our clients don’t suffer while the girls and I sort our schedules out.

Those of you who are parents will understand the on-the-job education I’m getting. I think I’ve learned more about life in the past eight months of watching them grow than I have in my previous 42 years, and one of those lessons relates particularly well to the topic we discuss in this column, namely digital sales and marketing.

My daughters are developing new skills at a blinding, sometimes terrifying pace. They’ve started crawling, sitting up, pulling themselves into a standing position and taking their first shaky, hesitant steps. What I’m fascinated with, though, and what I think can be applied to your marketing efforts, is how they’ve developed these new skills. It’s simple really: They try new things.

That’s all there is to it. I watch them do it pretty much every day. When the toy box they tried to use to prop themselves up is a little too light and tips over, they bank that information and try using something else the next time. When the angle they were leaning at causes a tumble, the next time they try a different angle. They are the living proof of the old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

You’ve probably heard the oft-repeated misquote of Thomas Edison regarding his attempts to make an efficient filament for incandescent light bulbs that goes something like: “I didn’t fail 10,000 times; I succeeded in finding 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” While it makes for a clever coffee mug, it’s not actually what Edison said. What he did say is far more interesting (and valuable). The actual quote is as follows:

“…after we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed ‘to find out anything.’ I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way.”
(as quoted in the January 1921 issue of American Magazine)

So let me ask you: When was the last time you tried something new in your digital marketing mix? I’ve been sharing tips for improving your efforts in this regard for a few years now; my guess is that even though those articles may have seemed interesting at the time, they were probably relegated to the “we’ll try it someday” pile. Well friends, today is that someday. If you find that your online marketing efforts haven’t generated the results you’d like, perhaps you’ve proved “that the thing couldn’t be done that way” and that it’s high time to try something new.

So what will it be? Is it time to start a company blog? How about setting up that business page on Facebook or the business profile on LinkedIn? Is it maybe time to consider an overhaul of your Website with a view to making it more discoverable? Whatever you decide, take a page from the playbook of my eight-month-old daughters: Try something new and if it doesn’t work, try something else.

Jerry Kennedy earned his stripes as an operations and sales manager in the lubricants industry. He is currently the co-founder of CDK Creative, a digital marketing agency that brings his real-world sales and operations experience to the world of online marketing. Learn more or request a consultation at http://cdkcreative.com. Email him at jerry@cdkcreative.com.