Over the last couple months, my son Jacques has had the sniffles – not COVID but still annoying for him and, I’m not gonna lie, more so for me. He said he had trouble blowing his nose.
I’ve also noticed recently that my tweenager’s nose is a wee bit crooked. In the most charming of ways, of course. The other night, I mentioned this observation to him.
He casually replied that it was probably from that accident at skateboarding camp in the second grade.
Uh. Excuse me?!
This was new news to me. Apparently, he had injured his nose, no bleeding, no bruising. And just happened to forget to tell me and his dad. It healed on its own – hence the asymmetry.
I took a flashlight to collect some first-party data (as researchers are prone to do) and looked up his nose myself. And then I saw it, clear as day. I saw what I can only describe as a “mass” – a big one that blocked about 90% of his nostril.
As someone who has the pleasure of breathing through both of her nostrils, I immediately went into mama-bear mode. I booked him a visit to his pediatrician the next day. Then an ENT (ear, nose, throat) consult for the following week. And of course I proceeded to read all the info I could find online about deviated septums — readying Jacques and myself for next steps on booking what would surely be pediatric septoplasty.
The (very young) ENT doctor examined my son’s nose with his nose tool thingys. Listened to Jacques talk about his symptoms. Asked him questions. All very slowly. Very patiently. Very methodically.
Too slowly, too patiently, and too methodically in my opinion. I could feel my anxiety creeping up with every passing second. I mean, CLEARLY he sees what I see up there, and OBVIOUSLY there’s a giant mass blocking his right nostril, right? I wanted to fast-track this process, like yesterday!! Why was this Doogie Howser slow-walking this issue?!
Putting down his nose tool thingy, Doc explained: “Jacques’s dealing with multiple issues/conditions here. Let’s tackle each one at a time to minimize error. The sniffling nose could be allergies or it could be something else. And yes, he probably has a deviated septum from that injury a few years back.
Doc: “So, let’s start here.” He handed me a prescription for Flonase. I stared at the paper. Then the doctor. Then the paper.
Me: “Yeah, ok. He’s sniffling… But shouldn’t we also get on the schedule for the surgeon ASAP? His nostril is totally blocked! Look at that mass; it’s huge.”
I’m not the best actress, so he could hear my agitation with his approach. After all, I had already read about treatments! I could even say “septoplasty” 5 times fast. I KNEW what the problem was: My son can’t breathe through half his face for chrissake! I guess I came across a bit forceful.
Doc: “Clearly YOU seem to want surgery” (insert eyeroll here). I stared at him.
He quickly went on to explain, “We should take it step by step. First, let’s treat the symptoms we KNOW we can treat immediately and with the least invasive methods. Then we can cross that off the list of complications before getting to the surgery part. Yes, we will probably move to surgery to correct the septum. But he still can breathe through his other nostril. So there’s no immediate danger.”
Setting my ego aside for a moment… Doc was applying some very basic practical wisdom that I was lacking in my mama-bear moment. When I thought my son couldn’t breathe, it felt like the only correct solution was to rush to the most permanent (and the most extreme) one.
But what I should have recognized, was that my son’s doctor was applying mental models, much like I do in my work with clients. Mental models are useful for decision-making, especially when you’re deciding what problems to solve, how to solve them, and in what order.
As marketers, we can apply mental models too.
Let’s take one mental model, Occam’s Razor*, which can be summarized as follows:
Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
As an example, imagine you are a marketer for a consumer goods brand and your company isn’t selling as much product as you need. As a direct-to-consumer company, imagine also that among your immediate competitors, your MSRP is on the higher end of the pricing scale. The obvious solution you might come to is to drop your product’s price, right?
Imagine next, as one of the better marketers in the biz, you don’t jump to conclusions just yet. (Good for you!) You take a deep breath and apply some practical wisdom. You have a number of levers you could pull, right?
Let’s look at the 4 Ps.
Price & Product: The most obvious decision could be to lower prices to be more competitive. A pricing study done properly will take time, money, and effort. You don’t want to get this wrong — because you know that once you lower the price of your product it’s hella hard to get it back up again. Generally speaking, you should hold the line on price.
Promotion: You could also look at your communications and advertising mix — and rebalance your long and short marketing mix to improve awareness, consideration, or preference for your brand — so that consumers choose your brand over others when they are buying in your category.
Placement: As a DTC marketer, your primary sales channel is probably through your own site. You’ve probably applied all the best practices to the website design. The UX/UI team designed it to meet all the best standards for e-commerce. But does your site align with the decision-making journey that your consumer takes when buying in your category?
Imagine that you loosely apply Occam’s Razor to this question. Let’s call it Emelia’s Eliminator:
Among competing reasons for low customer adoption, eliminate the simplest ones first, then work your way to more complex ones.
You’re looking for the simplest relevant question to solve. Not unlike the ENT who wanted to address the allergies before going straight to surgery. You’d do this by asking yourself: “Is the problem caused by our price? What is the simplest thing I can test and address first to knock out any easy-to-solve issues that might help nudge up sales now?”
Well, it’s probably the placement lever. Namely, what can you do to better understand how users are experiencing the website? Are there ways to make the e-commerce process better, easier, and smoother to complete the sale? Can you further refine to nudge the user to purchase?
So here’s the rub: Whether you’re dealing with a deviated septum or lower-than-expected sales and revenue, start with the least invasive corrective actions before you cut anything more permanent.
PS: Here’s a good piece about pricing by Mark Ritson.
* Farnam Street blog has an excellent summary of the idea.
