Marketing smarts from a 6-month-old

My youngest son is a beast.

He’s just hitting 7 months old now, and he’s already wearing 18-month clothes. (No idea where he gets it—my build is… let’s just call it slight and leave it at that.)

A few weeks ago he figured out how to haul his huge frame up into a standing position, and now he seems to think that he knows how to walk.

He’ll muscle himself up on the couch, then let go like he’s going to take a stroll around the room.

But he can’t really balance himself yet, so…

SMACK!

He faceplants into the wall.

His latest trick is squirming under the dining room table and pulling up on a chair. This really freaks us out, because no matter which way he topples, he’s going to smash his head on something hard.

My office is in the basement, right under the living room. And about 30 times a day, I hear: “THUMP. WAAAAAAAA!!!” Followed by soft cooing and comforting noises from my wife and his two older brothers.

But as soon as the sobbing stops, he’s right back at it.

(And as I write this, there’s the crying again.)

The other day I was reading a story about the late Gary Halbert, one of the best marketers and copywriters who ever lived.

One day Gary showed an ad to his apprentice. The product was great, and the ad was brilliant, full of Gary’s usual grab-you-by-the-throat bluster and bravado.

But it was a total flop.

Gary simply shrugged and said, “I have no idea why that didn’t work.”

SMACK! Faceplant.

Even the best marketers fail regularly.

In fact, if you’re not failing and failing HARD, that means you’re not pushing the envelope.

Experience and “book smarts” are valuable guides, but you still don’t know what will happen when you put your offer in front of a prospective customer.

Testing and failing and testing again is the only way to reliably hit homeruns.

That’s why I’ve been loving the Thrive Themes marketing toolset lately.

You can spin up a new landing page or create a new popup to split test in just minutes.

For a shot at winning your own copy of Thrive (worth $147), go here:

http://joshuaearl.com/giveaways/thrive-themes-giveaway

Related posts:

  1. Who else wants a bigger email list? My #1 goal for 2016 is growing my email list to 10,000 subscribers. That’s a 7X increase—pretty ambitious. And my new “weapon of choice” that’s going to help me get there is a suite email marketing powertools from a startup called Thrive. Here’s the problem I’ve always had in the...
  2. And the winner is… The results of my Thrive Themes Giveaway are in, and the winner is… Bridgit Kong! Bridgit lives in Calgary, Canada. She owns a virtual assistant business and her husband has a handyman/renovation business. They plan to use their website (and Thrive!) to escape “pay check to pay check,” “project to...
  3. The “baby steps” principle of marketing that works Did you ever see the comedy “What About Bob”? Bill Murray plays Bob Wiley, a guy who’s so paranoid that his fear basically paralyzes him. He’s afraid to get on elevators… Ride a bus… Or even touch anything out in public because he thinks he’ll get sick and die. Early...
  4. Win some, lose some Once in a while a client will ask me, “So can you offer a guarantee of results?” And I’d love to say “Yes!” But the reality is that there are just too many variables in any marketing project to know exactly how it’s going to play out. Here’s an example:...