Ready Fire Aim or Ready Aim Fire

These are two very different processes. But both have one thing in common, getting ready. Success or failure can depend on how you get ready.

I recently heard from two friends the results of separate SEO / SEM campaigns, both of which failed. The company of one friend (I'll call him John) used the Ready Fire Aim Method, the other friend used the Ready Aim Fire method.

I'm not going to go into the exact details of each campaign, but I do want to look at the "getting ready" each business made.

Both Jane's and John's companies, have a good website. They drive get traffic, that is converted to clients. Neither site was the highest ranked on some search terms, but used SEM (I think effectively) to boost their traffic.

John's company decided the best way to get more traffic and sales was to increase Search Engine Marketing spending. They planned to adjust it over time to channel the money into the most productive avenues.

Jane's company did the opposite. They did lots of research and picked out the best places and search terms to spend their money.


What happened?
Neither company saw an increase in traffic or sales over the course of the marketing and SEO effort.

After much skull scratching and soul searching it turns our that both companies made a similar mistake. Their businesses are cyclical and seasonal. They get slow in the summer and pick up again in the fall, everyone kind of knows it, but with the economy being weak this past year, they never saw a real uptick in sales in the previous fall / winter.

Jane's and John's companies were fighting an established business trend. They had made a basic assumption that was incorrect and proceeded down a path that while logical was wrong.


What can we learn?
Always check your basic assumptions. In this case the assumption was that the companies' potential customers were out there paying attention and if they just marketed to them more effectively sales would increase.

Post Script
Both companies' campaigns did extend, slightly,  into the fall,  because the Pay-Per-Click part of their marketing budget was not used as fast as they thought. They did get some good results from that part of the program. But by then they did not have the budget left to follow through.