Has your marketing plan ever been scrutinized by "been there once, done that once" club?
A a couple of examples:
"Tradeshows don't work. We didn't get any leads from the one we did last year".
"This publication has terrible response rates. We tried advertising in it once".
Trying anything once in marketing is a bad idea -- especially if the audience/product/company is new and has yet to build awareness in the market.
Seth Godin's new book, The Dip, is a concise guide on when to quit (when you're about to hit the law of diminishing returns) and when to persist (with an eye on long-term returns). It's refreshing to find a change management book that one may actually have time to read in the midst of a transition.
It's also heartening to get permission to quit, in the midst of "grit-your-teeth for glory" business tomes.
Although you might be pursuing the wrong market, don't quit it for the wrong reasons. An extra data point or two to test the waters may give you the answer -- all you need are the guts to follow through.
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