The 3 Stage Cycle Of Successful Marketing

Most marketing people will tell you that the key to any successful business is ‘testing’.

But there’s a little more to it…

And to explain, I’m going to enlist the help of a theoretical physicist!

Huh?!

Believe it or not, successful marketing shares much with a fundamental principle of science.

You see, in his ‘Lectures on Physics’, theoretical physicist Richard P. Feynman says:

“The test of all knowledge is experiment.”

Reading his lectures recently, that quote stuck out. But even more interesting is what Feynman goes on to ask: “…what is the source of knowledge?” And “where do the laws that are to be tested come from?”

Now, on first look that’s a bit much. But the answers lie in a simple 3 stage cycle that you can use to increase the effectiveness of marketing for any type of business.

To explain how, let’s take a subject most of us are familiar with – information publishing – as an example…

The test of all knowledge is experiment

Say you’ve produced a new book on weight-loss for men.

OK, good stuff. Now you need to tell people about it and sell some copies…

So, you write a sales promotion.

Question is, how do you pitch it, and who do you pitch it to?

Naturally your first idea would probably be to pitch it at men… Do you want to lose weight? Yes? Then you want this book!

But hang on, because you could scare men into buying it – if you don’t read this book, you’ll get fatter – or you could use hope – if you read this book you’ll get thinner…

Which is the better angle?

Here we’re back to Feynman’s original line: “The test of all knowledge is experiment.” So, you experiment – you try both angles and see which one works best.

“Experiment, itself,” however, only “helps” us to come to a conclusion “in the sense that it gives us hints.”

Let’s say the fear angle comes out top in the experiment. Men are fearful of not losing weight. This is a hint, a hint at something bigger.

The 3 stage cycle of successful marketing

Feynman goes on to say that what is also needed is:

“…imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations – to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath… and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.”

So we have the hint. Men are fearful of putting on weight. Now we must use our imagination. We must go deeper – why are men fearful of putting on weight?

Could it be because they will think themselves less attractive? Could be. And it follows then that men want to attract women… so a good guess would be that a better way to sell your book on weight loss would be to aim it at helping men to attract women…

And another guess… men are fearful that women will not like them if they are overweight. It’s fair to assume this is not unfounded. So we can guess that women are in interested in the weight of men.

Could there then be women out there who want their men to lose weight? Could we aim the book at those women? Is your man a little loose round the waist? Of course he is, but this book will make him thin!

To check these we experiment again, we ‘test’ our guesses.

For the sake of argument, let’s imagine the result is that we actually find…

‘Books on men’s weight-loss sell best to women.’

This is a brand new ‘generalisation’ – one that, in this example, increases your profitability. Without experiment, imagination and testing, we might never have discovered.

We can look at those three factors as a repeating cycle…

An initial experiment provides fuel for the imagining process, which provides ideas for testing, the results of which may give new reasons for experimentation.

Whatever field of business you may be involved with, to discover the great ‘generalisations’, the ‘marketing laws’ that work best, those that lead to the greatest profit, you should follow this simple 3 stage process…

1. First do your initial experiment. Try it, seen what happens.

2. Then go through the imagining process. What bigger ideas does your initial experiment hint at? Develop them and have a guess at what the bigger ideas could be.

3. Then test those ideas. Check to see if your guess were right…

You’ll be amazed at the new marketing ideas you discover.

Category: Marketing