Learning when to switch tactics as the results falloff

This morning I planted a few hundred seeds into the garden.

Normally I try to grow the seeds into baby plants and then transplant those. They're stronger and more likely to survive.

But with the weather lots of the baby plants aren't surviving long enough to get transplanted. A good third of the garden has been bare and waiting for plants for months.

I decided to change my tactic and plant seeds directly into the bare spots. They'll take more attention than usual but if I keep waiting for baby plants, I might run out of time and have nothing to show for it.

I'll still keep transplanting as an option but perhaps only during spring and fall when there's a high risk of slugs.

Since the end goal is to grow food all season long, switching up the tactics throughout the season makes sense. One might perform better in one set of conditions. The other is better in a different set of conditions.

With your Shopify store you'll want to be open to varying your tactics over-time too. Emailing newsletters is a great tactic but there might be times or cases where it works better and worse. Advertising works but it's become difficult to keep it profitable during the 4th quarter due to bidding competition.

Try what I do. Try out various tactics, measure how they perform, retry failures at a later period, and continue to use successes. You'll want to keep notes about the tests (e.g. email performed best in Spring and Summer) but those can be a foundation to your marketing calendar.

Keep trying things and see what works. One rule-of-thumb is to use 20% of your marketing budget (time, money) on tests and experiments so you're always learning.

Measuring the long-term impact of your tactics is important too. Getting a one-time buyer is good but getting a repeat buyer could change a so-so tactic into a winner. Use Repeat Customer Insights Cohort Report and Customer Segmenting to monitor those improvements and customers.

Eric Davis