Half Preggers

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Sometimes we figure out that we’re not a witch at all, I guess, but it’s also surprising how often that same sort of decision making is absent in the thinking about how some business decisions are approached.
We do things to drive revenue. We do things to drive engagement. We do things to drive traffic. The problem is that often we do one expecting it to do the others. Which it might. But one can’t make traffic-generating decisions and demand that revenue be the result. Make a revenue decision. Good witches or bad?

We had a case where  virtual worlds were the flavor of the month and we met with them to figure out how we could grow our business by being there.  After hearing about how we’d buy the “land” and put up a building, it became obvious that there was no business to be grown.  Being there was a great marketing decision, I guess, for the businesses that wanted engagement and some visibility, but it was a lousy return on investment from a revenue point of view.   We decided to pass because our marketing budget couldn’t support the decisions.  Our sales budget couldn’t even consider it.

Don’t snuggle up to the bad witch expecting you won’t be turned into a newt.  Recognize them for what they are and make a decision if that’s what you’re after.  You can’t be half pregnant – decide what you’re after and stay on task.  Or the yellow brick road.

Does that make sense?