The Goldilocks Principle
Swing too far to one side, and you alienate one target audience. Provide too many options and you paralyze your audience with decision paralysis. Provide only one option, and it may or may not be exactly what they were looking for. Simply put… within any marketing campaign, success is often best achieved when you find a healthy balance:
- Provide options – but not too many.
- Be different – but not too different.
- Invest time to research and study – but eventually, it’s time to make a decision and act upon it.
The Temptation
Space can sometimes feel like an unlimited resource within a digital environment. Need more room? Add it below. Want more menu options, add it as a submenu…
However, a freewheeling attitude can quickly result in a website that is so cluttered with every conceivable choice and option, that visitors are instead pushed away in frustration.
So how do we find a healthy balance with all the digital marketing options available to us?
Let’s avoid overloading visitors with too many options
Let’s avoid overloading visitors with too many options
The Cure: Testing
The option to conduct realtime A/B testing is a resource that businesses and individuals (myself included) all too often fail to take full advantage of. With sufficient traffic, these tests tell us exactly how people in the real world will respond to a given situation – and often provides far more accuracy than a typically conducted user survey.
Note: Google Optimize is a great resource for implementing simple split tests.
Common Mistakes
So practically speaking, what are some ways that businesses tend to miss the mark on delivering a healthy marketing campaign?
Website Menus & Calls to Action
- Do Provide quick access to 1. Your most popular products. 2. Your most profitable products. 3. A search or deeper navigation option for additional choices.
- Don’t include links every insignificant and obscure page.
- Learn more about meeting the needs of your visitors.
Emails
- Trying to bring a customer along on the full pathway of the customer journey – all within one email.
- Burying Calls to Action far beyond where most readers will ever scroll.
- Omitting a call to action towards the end of the message.
- Including a cornucopia of clutter in the signature/footer of the email.
- Learn more about crafting email campaigns with purpose.
Organic Search Results
- Overloading the copy with branding, at the sacrifice of omitting anything else that might draw the searcher in.
- Giving a thirty-minute presentation, when all they’ve got time for is an elevator pitch.
- Learn more about working within a search engine friendly environment.
Moving Forward
Take some time to physically re-look at your recent marketing efforts.
What is one next action that you can work on right now, that would start moving your marketing towards a healthy balance of choice and design?
