Never is it more clear that random effort yields random results than when you look at the “marketing” of far too many SaaS companies…. maybe even yours.
Take a look at a SaaS company that’s stagnating or failing to reach their goals, and you almost always find this random hodgepodge of tactics that they “tried” at one time or another.
Search for their company name on Google and you’ll see ’em listed in a few app directories, you’ll find a press release or two, and maybe you’ll see a guest post from them on a third-party blog.
Then look at their site and you’ll find Analytics and A/B testing code, and even a newsletter subscription box, chat widget, or micro-survey embedded (often all of those!).
But if you explore behind the curtain, you’ll see that those aren’t really used the right way… if they’re used at all.
You’ll also find that they have a few PPC campaigns in their AdWords account, though they’re probably paused right now…
…but they activate ’em every once in a while (without changes) and throw a few hundred bucks at it just to see if the ads work this time. (spoiler alert: they won’t)
Each of those things – these marketing tactics – were “tried” and when they didn’t yield extraordinarily massive results instantly, they were deemed a failure and the company moved onto the next thing.
Now, this either means that these tactics simply never work (which is obviously not true)…
…or we can say that these companies don’t have a clear strategy within which to execute said tactics, setting themselves up for failure or at least sub-optimal results from the outset.
The latter is more like it and exactly why I say…
Random effort yields random results.
If you’re honest, you’ll admit that clearly, very successful companies don’t just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks, right?
Right… there’s a method to their madness.
And yes, while they often “try stuff” to see what works, even then it’s a hypothesis based around known or expected customer behavior and market knowledge…
…not a random bit of hope.
In fact, successful companies are always trying new things – including growth hacking – because they understand that it takes a mixture of tactics that each work well to reach any level of real scale.
Rarely is the hockey stick growth you seek the result of one simple tactic.
Just as rarely does that hockey stick growth come from random tactics thrown at the market to see what sticks.
Successful companies constantly level-set so they know where they are.
And they constantly reevaluate their goals so they know where they want to go.
And they create a map to get there.
That map, my friend, is their marketing plan.
They have a plan – a living, breathing, constantly evolving one – because they know that…
Random effort yields random results.
And they also know that you can’t scale random.
So remember… it’s probably not the individual tactics that aren’t producing the results you seek…
…it’s your lack of an overall marketing strategy.
Random effort yields random results.
Isn’t it time you had predictable growth from intentional effort?
About Lincoln Murphy
