No more magical thinking

Rob was rigid about his belief that direct mail didn’t work. Despite my advice to the contrary, he was not going to invest in a direct marketing campaign.

Mary was convinced that Facebook was the very best way to generate multiple new leads for her business. She invested a lot of money in a social media vendor to make it happen.

After I asked both of them a lot of questions, it became apparent to me that they were exhibiting a trait called magical thinking, which is when we believe that one thing happens as a result of another without a plausible link or cause. While there appears to be a correlation, you cannot actually prove—either statistically or scientifically—that one thing affects the other.

As humans, we’re wired to look for patterns. In Matthew Hutson’s book, The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking, he states: “We compose our life stories using the data given—the somewhat random happenings of our pasts—but then we get the roles of the data and the interpretation confused: We stare in wonder at how well the events seem to fit the theme, forgetting that we custom fit the theme to the events.”

Basically, we make stuff up to help our minds sort out information.

When I questioned Rob’s direct mail belief, I learned that in the past he had sent a trifold brochure mailing of 50 pieces using an inexpensive B2B mailing list. Twelve of them got returned, and no leads were generated.

In Rob’s mind, direct mail was the culprit. However, he failed to consider the actual causes: the mailing list, the envelope, the timing, the sample size and the trifold brochure. He was using magical thinking.

When I dug into Mary’s Facebook beliefs, she told me, “Everyone was on Facebook!” and “The average person spends 40 minutes a day reading her feed.”

While that data may be true, Mary’s interpretation of it caused her to ignore the fact that it may not be an effective lead-generation tactic for her. Her fan page had less than 100 followers and most were industry colleagues. Her best prospects were probably not using Facebook during the day. Also, there was no traffic to her website since the campaign started, providing more evidence of magical thinking.

You can’t help but make some assumptions about your marketing. Because of that, you should always question your interpretations. What’s the related or critical data you might be missing? Now is the time for clear thinking.

Tom Adams is an executive coach and strategic advisor to RIM service companies. Check out his Thrive in 5 videos online at www.TomAdams.com.