Greater than zero

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Remember that old line we heard a hundred times as a kid? Whatever happened to it? My theory is that it’s been replaced with fear. Fear that the idea – or, in this case, the ad – isn’t good enough, and if it isn’t a perfect 10 it won’t work. 

Well, here’s the problem with that thinking. If you have zero ads out in the world, zero ideas getting the light of day with your audience, you have exactly zero chances of success. Try selling that to your boss. 

But if you do something – anything – it is greater than zero. That’s a win. It’s a win because you can learn. You can react. You get pieces of information that help you go further down the path and mold future ideas into content with greater probability of success. Not only is that valuable knowledge gain an automatic win, sometimes you find out that the idea you thought was so-so is something your audience thinks is fantastic.  

In marketing, the journey is important because marketing is made up of pieces of information that lead to probable outcomes. You will never know if your idea is a good unless you try it. When the idea is just in your head or on a whiteboard, your odds are zero – and anything is greater than zero.