Zooming Out For Perspective
Once the pandemic hit, I took a much more active approach to my personal investment strategy. I love trying to identify trends and moving on them before the bulk of the market catches on, identifying wins like Peloton’s SaaS model, Shopify’s growing dominance, and Amazon somehow being underrated despite its size. I’ve been blessed to win more than I’ve lost in that space, but I still take L’s sometimes.
In fact, there are many times where, if I acted in a vacuum on a particular set of data or pricing history for a company, it would be easy to hit the panic button (Peloton included this past week or so). But that’s why it’s so important to zoom out and look at a larger history and broader set of data points than just the last week or so.
Marketing leaders everywhere are preparing to either validate their marketing strategies or throw their entire year into question based on what happens over the next few weeks. But is it ever wise to act on recency bias? Sure, the game has and will continue to change as Apple continues to build its walled garden. Based on some of the metrics you’re likely to see over the rest of the year, it’d be easy to panic and decide that email is dying as vanity metrics like open rates continue to taper off with each iOS 15 download. It’d be easy to assume Facebook ads just don’t get the job done and, depending on how your overall sales look, you might find yourself considering firing all of your influencers. The more arduous but worthwhile task is to take time to consider your site’s conversion rate, competitiveness on shipping and fulfillment, and MAP pricing strategies. Note: if you’re undercutting yourself on Amazon, no amount of marketing can save your on-site metrics.
But there’s always a broader set of data to consider. Ask yourself, are your challenges limited to your brand? Or on the flipside: are you winning because of a superior marketing strategy and great product-market fit, or simply because your competition was out of stock and your operations and inventory planning were superior over the spring and summer?
It’s important that as marketing leaders we take time to zoom out and consider a wider set of causes and effects than the often small-sample-size staring us in the face. Everyone loves to operate with recency bias. No matter what happens next week, the rest of this year, and beyond, just remember to zoom out and get a broader perspective.
