A Culture of Failure

Everyone talks about building a culture of innovation. But what about building a culture of failure? It doesn’t sound quite as positive, but maybe that’s where marketers should focus their efforts.

Failure is defined as "an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful." Think of the world’s great discoveries. How many successes were had on first attempts? 

Innovation is built on failure. The challenge to succeeding is becoming better at failing.

In Google’s blog article, “The Surprising Benefits of Failure”, they suggest that in order to build a “Culture of Growth”, you need to “foster a culture that embraces the use of data, testing, and optimization as a means to improve the customer experience every day.”

Google’s Analytics Marketing Director suggests instituting a "quarterly failure report" to shift how a marketer’s team tests and grows.

Testing is key, and provides the opportunity to prove out your hypothesis, to help you continually improve your efforts. What’s important is that all tests or enhancements don’t have to be big. Actually, making small, targeted changes makes it easier to test and measure incremental improvements, and then validate larger efforts, before spending time on them.

Why is this critical? Because data doesn’t lie, and data isn’t biased.

Using data to test and optimize improves the customer experience. For example, data insights can help you identify how to optimize your content, improve your offer, or revise your webpage, which in turn helps you deliver more relevant and personalized experiences. 

According to Marketing Insider, one of the top skills for marketers in 2017 is data analysis, and based on current research, there is a clear shortage of marketers with good data skills. So, improving data analysis skills could be something worth considering for personal development and marketability.

So a “failure” formula could be something like this:

• Identify opportunities for enhancement and relevant KPI’s.
• Test, measure and learn. 
• Either claim and implement a success, or fail fast and move on.
• Every few months analyze performance, discover what worked, what didn’t and why.
• Use the insights gained to continually improve.

Failure and growth can and should co-exist. By testing and learning, you can build a culture of growth, where insights help you make the most of your marketing efforts and deliver positive impact on the bottom line.