The Rear View Mirror in eCommerce Marketing

The Review View Mirror in Ecommerce Marketing is a Call to Action to Test Out New Ideas

As a society, we've been taught to become long-standing believers in life that history dictates the future. We should study it. We should use it as a guide to help us navigate the future. But in marketing, is this the way we should be navigating our decisions on what to do next?

Marketers Use Rear View Mirrors in the Form of Data 
As marketers, we have also been conditioned to follow this trend of ideology. Data is the answer and key to all successes. It's a guide, a map, and frankly how we should proceed into the future. Though there is a lot of sense in that, it can also be limiting the ability to test new things.

The rearview mirror is a tricky thing. They are added to cars to help you see more clearly a 360 view of your surroundings to help you avoid accidents. In marketing, it can save you a lot of money and time. But it can also stifle creativity and permit you from taking calculated risks towards trying new avenues and ideas.

Creativity and Calculated Risk-Taking Drives Sales Results
In the music industry, artists and record companies do this too. They want to ride the waves of the newest trends. Artists that deviate from that are trailblazers to the next big trend that makes careers and drives revenue. Just look at the success of Billie Eilish. Billie and her brother Finneas don't even own a rearview mirror, aren't bound by anything they or anyone before them has produced. I mean come on, they used an Australian pedestrian crosswalk as the hi-hat for the Grammy Award Winning Song of the Year, Bad Guy. It's all about channeling instincts, matched with hard work and creativity to drive results.

A/B Testing Winning Controls with Creative New Ideas
In marketing, just because a concept or strategy worked well once, does not mean if you repeat it, it will continue to work. Additionally, just because you try a new email subject line, an ad format or ad copy, a different landing page or conversion path once and it did not work, it doesn't mean that it's not worth trying again at another time with a different approach.

A/B testing is typically the way smart marketers dip their toes into the sand of a new idea. Taking the winning control of what traditionally worked and testing it against something new - which could be a completely small change like an image of an audience tweaked or the length of an email subject line, can help to move the needle on your sales in incremental ways.

It's an interesting dichotomy to go down the path of least resisted and leap for the win to jumping into unchartered territory and testing out new ideas, sales channels, and strategies.

The Challenge of Taking New Marketing Risks
We challenge you to take a new risk this quarter. If you haven't tried a specific style of a landing page or conversion path, try it out in an A/B test and see if it will win against your control. If you once tried advertising on Pinterest and it "didn't work" try it again with more concentration on what is or isn't working. If you have asked yourself the question of "How Can TikTok elevate my brand or sales on my eCommerce store?" then this might be an opportunity to spend some time and money exploring that new sales channel.

We recommend doing your research first to ensure that it's worth testing and then just do it and don't overthink it. Give yourself permission each quarter to test out new things - ad formats, landing pages, email subject lines, new marketing influencers - whatever it is, try it out! Time is the one thing in life that we can't change other than how we spend it. We often say, "we don't have time for this or that." But once you prioritize that new thing into your timeline, it becomes a habit and you magically find that time. You can do this; we support you!

If you're stuck and are looking for some fresh new ideas, contact us and let's explore new avenues together!

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