Baked a full campaign on a hunch, the data said otherwise

For about 8 months I ran all our client content plans based on what I thought was good, mostly gut feel and a few viral posts I saw on LinkedIn. Last Tuesday I finally pulled the conversion reports by channel and realized the blog posts I was pushing got traffic but almost zero signups, while two boring FAQ pages did 60% of the work. The tipping point was a client asking why their demo requests dropped after we revamped their site to match my 'better' layout. I had been optimizing for engagement when the actual goal was form fills, and nobody on the team flagged it because we never checked the end goal. Now I'm rebuilding the whole strategy around bottom-funnel keywords and I'm wondering, has anyone else had to admit their creative instincts were fighting the numbers? How do you force yourself to trust the data over taste when it feels backward?

2 comments

2 Comments

fisher.diana21d ago

My brother-in-law works in radio sales and he always tells this story about a station that switched to all Christmas music in October because the owner loved the holidays, and sure enough their ratings tanked until they flipped back. That always stuck with me because it proves even big money decisions get made on feelings. But speaking of gut calls, @linda_butler28 mentioned running numbers first, and I had a similar wake-up when I realized my carefully crafted email subject lines got opened half as much as the boring ones with the client's name in it. Now I keep a little spreadsheet of what actually converts and I force myself to look at it before I get too proud of any new idea.

linda_butler2821d ago

Honestly, same thing happened to me last quarter. It stings, but now I just run the numbers first and let my taste take the back seat.