Shovel vs Bran Flakes
The wrong tool for the job?
We all make mistakes, and generally we learn from them. Sadly, sometimes what we learn is way off base.
It's true that using a shovel to eat bran flakes is a mistake.
If I conclude that shovels are useless for handling bran flakes, that is a false conclusion. The problem is that a shovel is not effective at getting bran flakes out of a small bowl or into a human mouth.
Shovels work great for loading cereal into drums, or stirring it in a large tank.
When I was using Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to sell my proprietary glove box products to researchers and industrial firms, I had poor results. After over a decade of trying different PPC and SEO methods, I gave up on SEM due to high cost, low revenue and terrible conversion rates. I concluded that SEM is not effective for selling disruptive B2B products. I saw it as a distraction.
Now I suspect that conclusion was wrong. It could be that SEM will be a great way to generate leads for my product, if they are fed into a well designed marketing funnel. Like the shovel, SEO and PPC leads may be poor when feeding a sale page or a shopping cart, but they may work fine in feeding other tools that prepare prospects to buy, and possibly to buy some more common commodities before they are ready for our glove box.
I'm convinced that the real danger in making mistakes is when we learn incorrectly from them, closing off viable options. It can divert us from a productive path for YEARS.
Or, in other words, "Don't throw that shovel away; it's a good tool if you learn to use it correctly!"
Recent Comments
11
Hi Steve,
That is an interesting analogy.
I know on Facebook small companies put their products in front of people all the time. Pinterest is also an amazing place to get in front of a targeted audience. Your products sound interesting. I'm sure WA training will help you put them in front of an audience ready to buy.
Wendy
Thanks Wendy. After 15+ years of selling inefficiently, I have hundreds of satisfied customers on 5 continents, but I'm still hoping to get paid.
I've high hopes for facebook advertising, and early results are promising. However, at this point an effective marketing funnel to transform prospects into customers is my focus. Whether traffic I feed into it comes from facebook, google+, SEO or the phone book, the funnel is critical for development of understanding and trust needed to get professionals to try new technology.
If you are curious about our products, have a look at the video we did for the Chinese CDC in Beijing:
http://www.safe-t-dome.com/
That just shows one type of application for one of our products, but it is pretty easy to follow.
Thanks again for your attention and kind words
Steve
The video is cool. What a great product. There must be a huge demand for something like this - especially in the medical field. I'm sure you'll do really well with it once you get your funnel/marketing campaign underway.
Wendy
Glad you like the video.
I hope your analysis is right, Wendy.
They like the Safe-T-Dome in Canada, where we've shipped a few dozen for chemo prep, but the regulatory barriers in the US are steep for new tech in healthcare. Still, we are nibbling at the edges. I am counting on that funnel to reach R/D folks who have less armament to protect the status quo.
If it works well in R/D we might use it to go after medical, pharma and clinical lab users outside North America in a more systematic way.
Cheers,
Steve
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Hi, Stephen, you have shared some excellent advice from your experiences, my thought cut the shovel down to size and it becomes an excellent utensil for kids that are going through that picky food stage. Which I guess is a way of reinventing the shovel or just learning to use it in a different way or correctly for the purpose.
I like your thinking, Alexander. Building and modifying tools is always a great learning process and sometimes it really opens new doors...