Do It Wrong Quickly

Sometimes you start reading a book and quickly imagine it was written just for you and your situation. That is how I felt shortly after beginning to read "Do It Wrong Quickly", by Mike Moran.

Now, I am not about to critique the writing style or approach directly, you can check out the reviews for yourself on Amazon, but, what I am going to do is share with you my personal take-aways. As someone who has spent his entire online marketing career in CPG companies I can tell you that one of the biggest problems digital marketers have when working with traditional marketers is convincing them that in order to succeed you have to fail.

In other words, you're just not going to get it right the first time around, you're gonna have to test and re-test in order to not only succeed, but more importantly, understand 'why' you succeeded. Why is that? Because consumers have far more control over what information they consume than ever before.

They are more fragmented, and have become dependent on an array of ever-changing technologies. In short, digital consumer behaviors require new techniques, tactics, and strategies to reach them - and that requires marketers to constantly test their emails, web sites, and any other online properties in order to measure effectiveness.

No book I have found to date explains the importance of testing better than "Do It Wrong Quickly", by Mike Moran. He explains that due to the extensive means now available to measure the success and failure of just about anything on the Web, testing is more critical than ever. As Mike Moran explains in his book, ". . . the web allows you to measure everything - every tiny step in the process."

He goes on to say that the best model to represent the effectiveness of testing is that of Direct Marketing, but that the Web allows for an even better platform. Mike says, " You can know your response rate for every blessed step in the process, and you can experiment and tweak your marketing with far greater impact on the Web than any traditional direct marketing campaign."

Make no mistake however, this is not an easy sell to traditional marketers who are used to avoiding mistakes in the eyes of senior management. Failure, they have come to know, is not an option. They have spend their lives researching, calculating, seeking numerous approvals, number crunching, and deck writing all to please their bosses.

So, telling senior management that we're gonna start by making mistakes first, and then correct as we go just doesn't fly all that easy. As Mike Moran states, ". . . this requires a huge change in the way we (marketers) think. We are accustomed to spending months in meetings reaching consensus on every detail of 'the plan' and reviewing everything with executives for approval. - In the old marketing world, it is dangerous to make a mistake".

Unlike print advertising, where once the ad goes to print it's permanent, the Web allows for instant changes. As Mike says, "If (the ad) is not working in the morning, change it after lunch. Alter the offer or the words or the picture - even start from scratch if you have to. Above all, you must experiment and see what happens".

I can't say it better than that. All I'll add is that as long as you have a success metrics plan in place, go and make all the mistakes you can. "Do It Wrong Quickly", by Mike Moran. The only mistake is not reading the book.