I once read a sign in a locker room that has always stuck with me: “If You Hit Your Hand with a Hammer Every Day, It Will Never Get Better.” Before we jump into the main significance of this message, I’d like to point out that I saw this sign years ago and still remember it quite clearly. The message was quick and to the point and was accompanied by a simple image. Remember there’s a time and place for longer content. Think about the audience and location of your ads before you develop your copy. Not to perpetuate any derogatory stereotypes, but guys in a locker room probably aren’t looking to read a whole lot. A quick and tempting ad has the power to persevere and remain locked into your audience’s minds. Okay, so now that I’ve gotten my standard tangent out of the way, we’ll get into the marketing meat and potatoes I originally intended.

Unless you’re one of those athletes who continued hitting yourself in the head with that hammer, then the sign’s message should be quite clear: Your injury will never heal if you continue participating in your sport and don’t do anything differently in your routine. As I am just short of the athletic talent level of Tiger and Gretzky, I decided to pursue the limitless possibilities of the Internet, and have remembered this sign for a different reason. In my sapling days, when I was a young and inexperienced entrepreneur, I sometimes found myself experiencing aggravating defeats in my marketing ventures. The element that made them the most aggravating was that my lack of success was consistent. It seemed that even though I had some great input from some marketing gurus and had applied my own Einstein-level of genius that my ads just weren’t gaining the traction I thought they were capable of. Then I saw the sign…literally.

When I read that sign, I realized I’d been hitting my injured marketing campaign with a hammer and expecting it to get better. I was so confident in the ads I had going that I managed them like a desperate soon-to-be-vagabond in Vegas, playing the same number over and over again in roulette, thinking that I was improving my chances simply because of numbers and time elapsed. Your bootstrapped marketing campaign should be looked at the same—you’ve got an equal chance of failure or success with every prospect. Granted, sales and marketing does ultimately come down to a numbers game, increasing your chances of a sale with every person you ask, but you are a bootstrapped budget and can’t always afford to play the game of large numbers.

Lesson learned: Whether it came down to wrong geographical location, incorrectly targeted demographic, outlying economic factors…I came to realize that even though I had some fantastic ideas and approaches involved in my ads, they simply weren’t working. Don’t hold on too long to ads or business methods that aren’t working or you’ll end up with an extremely bruised and battered hand. A particular method to help you decide how well something’s working for your business is conducting an A/B split test. For example, create two versions of an ad for the same exact product/service. To ensure accuracy, make sure you disseminate those ads equally among demographics and locations. Then, measure and compare the results of ad A versus ad B. Go with the one that garnered the best results, and then use that ad to create another split test down the road. Because even though you may have managed to put the hammer down, you may still be able to look into some business supplements to take you to an even higher level of success.

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