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| Sing It, Sir |
My use of IST here is a little more idiosyncratic, and you'll have to let me walk you around for a little while. I promise it'll be worth it.
I'm a podcast fan, because they make me seem smarter than I actually am. Along with decades of working for start ups that had data insights that you could tie to learning optimal creative practices, which is why people bring me on board to help with their work. Sorry for the humblebrag.
This week, my habit led me to a replay of a Freakonomics Radio podcast that shows the popular belief that there is an average human body temperature (98.6, right? Not so much) is a misnomer. It turns out that the study that established this wasn't properly done, with a faulty thermometer at play, and other factors. Humans have their temperatures go up and down all the time, either through exercise, menstrual cycles, time of day, and so on. So this number that we all know isn't true, and the common practice of ascribing small changes in temperature to the body fighting off infectious diseases is, in the words of the analyst that dug into the matter, inappropriately simplistic thinking.
What a wonderful phrase. Who says that scientists have to be poor communicators? But as it is a whole lot of syllables, let's just call it IST, since that also makes a snide little comment about political exclusions.
I'm very anti-IST. You should be too.
One of the realities of existence as a marketing and advertising consultant is that you are usually there to fix a problem, and have to prove your bona fides right away. Usually with clients that have highly defined pain points. So if the reason why you are in the room is a poor metric, you need to fix that ASAP.
That's fine; it's fair and well understood. But what isn't so fair or understood is what happens next. That's because IST isn't just a poor way to live your life, it's also an extremely efficient way to tank your marketing.
So let's take this out of theoretical. The client has poor conversion on the landing page. What's the first step? Well, there are plenty of rules of thumb about how to improve the rate, which have been proven from a wide range of tests and consumer practices. You can try to limit scroll, cut down on leak points, make sure that all data entry is mission critical, confirm load times on various platforms, code responsively in the strong likelihood of high mobile usage, and so so. Apply these tactics to a client that was not previously aware about them, and your rate will likely rise.
Voila. Problem solved. Cut us a check. Sound the trumpets. All hail the wise and helpful consultant! Also the designer, and the coder, and the copywriter, and whoever else is on the team, and maybe even the client for the presumed flexibility in moving off the old page.
Except that, well...
Now it turns out that our SEO may be off a touch, because all of that copy that was causing the scroll was helping. Also, sales isn't as happy as you might think, because the "new" leads that are coming through the pipe are not converting as well as the old ones. The old ones, after all, were really proving their level of interest by fighting through the poor execution.
Oh, and pretty soon? The new rate bump may start to flatten out, especially if the business served by the landing page has seasonality issues, or the company's selling proposition is made less competitive by competitor actions, or the means that drive traffic to the landing page are failing.
IST would tell you that optimizing landing pages is a clear and simple, before and after practice. But the Web is not now, and never has been, a set and forget experience. And your landing page changes can and should lead to rethinking your display ads, or your emails, especially as those have a lot more meat on the bone in terms of testing ability from bigger sample sizes.
I don't mean to discourage you from trying to clear tasks and fix problems. Metrics can and should improve, especially when you work with people who know what they are doing. Fixing today's problem is how you keep it from becoming tomorrow's problem, and when today's problem becomes tomorrow's problem, that's intolerable.
But tomorrow?
There's going to be another problem.
Which also isn't going to solve quickly or easily if you are engaging in IST...
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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.
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