The Reason Why Looking at Past Success is so Important

Why exactly do you like the things that you do? Have you ever watched a movie that you really enjoy, one you’ve seen over and over again and loved it every time, and then someone asked you why. Is it the characters, the story, the action, the chemistry between the actors?

You stop to consider it, and when you’re done you realize that you can’t really say what it is about the movie you like so much. You know you like it but that’s about it. There’s just a certain feeling to the movie that you like. That’s the only thing you know about it, but that’s enough.

Now let’s apply this to marketing. If people aren’t always even sure why they like the things that they do, then how exactly are you supposed to create something aimed at them? How are you supposed to know that they’ll like your marketing when their tastes can be so up in the air?

I’m sorry to say that you can’t. Even the best marketing can fall flat if you aren’t careful, but one thing you can do is figure out why previous marketing worked.

Here’s where having some sample brochures, posters, postcards, flyers, and everything else you can think of will come into the picture. This is the marketing you’ve already done, and very importantly, the marketing you already know the success rate of.

The point isn’t to take these sample brochures and just try to replicate them, but to figure out why they were a success. What was it about them that made people want to buy your products? Was it the wording you used or the images you picked? Maybe the product itself had more to do with it, and almost any kind of marketing would’ve produced similar results. Maybe just making sure people could see the product was more than enough.

These can be difficult question to answer, and you’ll need to answer all of them if you want to be sure that you end up with some strong marketing to show for yourself.

Look over what you did, how successful it was, and then try to figure out why it was successful. You can try literally asking your customers if you really want to. You might set up a system where you follow up every ad campaign by asking people what they thought about it.

Now you can have a better understanding of why people liked your product and why your sales were as solid as they were. Use this information with your new marketing pushes to better organize them and capitalize on the previous successes that you had. You can’t repeat your success unless you know exactly what it was you did that was successful.