Begin With the End in Mind: Why & How to Plan Your Marketing Campaign in Reverse
When setting out on a road trip, the first thing most people do is turn to their GPS navigation system. It couldn’t be much simpler. Just type in the final destination, and the program reverse engineers the highways and byways required to reach it.
If there are multiple routes, they’ll be identified — along with the number of miles and the amount of time the journey will take. There are even filters that allow users to avoid major highways or toll roads. All the driver has to do is select the option that works best for their travelling preferences and press start.
In fact, we’ve become so used to and dependent upon GPS that it’s practically second nature.
Backwards marketing works with the exact same principles, and the best part is, with just a little practice, you’ll wonder why you haven’t always done things this way.
Embracing the 2nd Habit
In his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey is a huge fan of reverse engineering. This concept was so crucial that it earned the number two slot in his list of habits — beginning with the end in mind. As he goes on to explain, “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.”
Doing so saves time, money and a slew of headaches and hassles along the way.
Reverse engineering your marketing campaigns will empower you to make smarter decisions, fully understand the scope of your undertaking and allow you to create realistic benchmarks and targets to evaluate your performance and results.
Now that you have a better understanding of what backwards marketing is, let’s dig a bit deeper into why it matters and how to do it.
Why You Should Bet on Beginning With the End in Mind
Beginning with the end in mind can be a game changer in practically any arena of life. However, when it comes to your marketing campaigns, it’s a ploy best used for long-term or complex campaigns. When dealing with simple and short-term goals or targets, it isn’t all that necessary (or beneficial) to do.
For larger, complex undertakings, it’s easy to identify the beginning and the end. It’s the middle that gets a bit muddy. And whether out of ignorance or optimism, most people grossly underestimate what goes into achieving those goals. That’s when backwards marketing can really come to the rescue.
In a 2017 article in Psychological Science this concept was put to test in the classroom. Prior to this study (which was actually a series of five studies conducted collaboratively across three different nations) research had clearly shown that specific plans and visualization techniques were beneficial to successful outcomes. But this prior research also clearly demonstrated that there were certain mindsets and thought processes that could actually hinder performance. Three culprits really stood out:
- Feelings of distance from the goal (like, “I’m here but where I need/want to be is WAY over there…)
- The number of goals and sub-goals involved in the pursuit
- Focusing on ideas versus focusing on the action required to make it happen
Any one of these (or a combination thereof) was enough to slow the goal-setter down and hamper their forward momentum.
Once the study was completed, a pattern began to emerge. Students who employed the backwards strategy showed better results than the rest of the pack:
- They better anticipated the necessary steps for completion
- They were better able to stick to the plan they’d created
- They had higher expectations for a successful conclusion
- Plus they felt less pressed for time as their pursuit progressed
The researchers concluded that envisioning the steps necessary to complete a goal reduced anxiety, increased confidence, and lead to more effort. Plus, goal setters felt closer to the end goal in terms of time when they envisioned success rather than failure.
Now that you get why it works, it’s time to dig a bit deeper into the how of it.
How to Backwards Engineer Your Next Marketing Campaign
Backwards marketing is relatively simple, even if it feels a little counter intuitive at first. It really boils down to five steps to follow, in sequential order.
Step 1: Define Your Goal in S.M.A.R.T. Terms
Just about everyone knows about S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.) That’s the first place to start. For example, “Our team needs to sell 1,000 widgets in the next 6 weeks,” or, “Our team needs to generate $1,000,000 in revenues over the next 6 months.” For the sake of backwards marketing, creating a timeline or deadline is crucial, as this will help provide benchmarks to measure where you should be versus where you actually are when you’re dealing with reality, not just theory. And these don’t have to be monetarily based. This will work just as well if you’re simply trying to add 1,000 new subscribers to your newsletter or YouTube channel.
Step 2: Know Your Closing Ratio
Take a look at data from past campaigns to determine what your closing ratio is. For ease of math, let’s pretend you’re converting 10% of qualified leads into closed sales. That means that if you’re looking to sell 1,000 widgets, you’ll need 10,000 qualified prospects reached. Or, if you’re worried about revenue, if you’re looking to generate $1,000,000 and your average sale is $500.00, you’ll need to close 2,000 sales. Using the same 10% closing ration that means you’d need 20,000 qualified prospects.
But not everyone you’re going to reach will be a qualified prospect. Using the same 10% conversion rate of exposures to qualified prospects, for the 1,000 widget goal, you’d need to reach an audience of 100,000 relevant individuals. For the revenue goal, that would be 200,000.
Step 3: Create Incremental Benchmarks
For the 1,000 widgets in 6 weeks goal, you’d need to make 167 per week. Which means you’d need 1,670 qualified prospects in an overall fresh audience of 16,7000 individuals. Or, to break it down even further, 24 sales a day every day (with 240 qualified prospects in an overall audience of 2400.)
For the $1,000,000 revenue in 6 months, you’d do the same thing. You’d need to generate $166,667 each month (or 334 sales which requires 3,340 prospects in a total audience of 33,400).
Take a moment to do the math and break that down further to the required weekly and daily targets.
Step 4: Determine the Best Outlets & Channels to Meet Your Goals
Now that you’ve got hard numbers and clear deadlines, the next order of business is determining how and where you’ll find your audience. There are no right or wrong answers, but this is no time to get all Pollyanna about it. Be reasonable and realistic. And consider multi-faceted approaches.
It’s equally important at this point to be very specific. Don’t just say, “on social media” but instead determine which social media outlets you’ll use. And don’t stop there. For example, if you say, “on Facebook” be clear what that means. What portion will be organic, from your own page? What portion will be from paid advertising? What portion will be generated from unpaid promotion inside of niche groups?
This is also a great time to start listing the tools and resources you’ll need to accomplish your goals. Which team members will “own” each specific task or channel? Will all of your talent be in-house, or will some of it be outsourced to vendors? Will you need to invest in specific software or services?
Step 5: Develop Your Messaging & Strategy
Once you know how your goal breaks down and have clearly identified who your market actually is, the last step, working on the messaging and packaging and all of the frills that will make your offer attractive for your audience will be a whole lot easier. It will also empower you to be very laser-focused and specific to the needs and wants of different target markets you’ll approach on different marketing channels. After all, you don’t use the same approach when targeting someone on Facebook as you would on Twitter or LinkedIn or YouTube.
But if you didn’t take the time to break things down, that’s a mistake you could very easily make — trying a one size fits all approach and wondering what went wrong when your deadline has come and gone.
Another crucial part of your strategy is your internal strategy. As important as it is to communicate with your audience, it’s equally critical that you communicate clearly with the rest of your team. After all, it’s the teamwork that will ultimately make the dream work.
More Success, Fewer Surprises
Now that you know the five steps and all that they entail, it’s easy to see why backwards engineering your goals is so powerful.
When you know what you need to accomplish each and every day and week to stay on track, it’s a whole lot easier to make tweaks quickly — without waiting until your deadline has passed or your budget is already blown. Reverse engineering your goals (with deadlines) creates a built in system of checks and balances that prevents you from straying too far off course and makes a successful attainment well within your reach.
Take a moment to think about the last goal you failed to meet. Now plug it into this system and try to determine where you went wrong and what you could have done to achieve the outcome you’d been striving for.
I’m willing to bet that with a little time and practice, you’ll never return to the old way of doing things. You’ll be too busy succeeding and executing to ever look back!
