A Loss at How to Win?

Nobody likes to lose. We all want to win. It is built into our system. Everyone wants to be the biggest, the best, the smartest, the prettiest, the “everything-est.” With that in mind, it’s hard to accept sometimes, especially for people of a ferociously competitive nature, that losing can actually sometimes be a good thing.

The Arcade Machine

For example, at Skyhook, we have a homemade arcade machine built from scratch, complete with an old PC tower, red and white racing stripes, a large screen TV, and loaded with thousands of the classic arcade games from way back when. I’ve lost to John Gough 5 times in a row in head to head match ups on NBA Jam. Though it tears me up on the inside each time I lose, I’ve picked up some valuable insights along the way that have helped me gain what it takes to boast a current winning streak of 4 straight games against Josh Nichols, the next best “NBA Jammer” (not to be confused with “NBA Jimmer”) in the office.

Though the parallelism may seem a bit far fetched, I believe that this same principle can be applied to developing and marketing a killer website for any business. Let me explain what I mean. Chances are, unless this is your very first rodeo, you have had a website that was originally intended to promote your business but somehow failed along the way. Perhaps you didn’t see enough traffic, or maybe the people that did come to your site didn’t buy anything. Maybe you weren’t able to rank on search engines for keyword terms you thought you should be found for. Your reason for deeming the project as a failure could be any of these things or a number of others.

Preparing to Win Online

It hurts when your website fails just like it hurts when you lose at NBA Jam. However, this is even worse because it has hurt your pocket book. Despite the inclination you may have to bag the whole internet thing and stick with traditional media for marketing your business, now is not the time to give up. More and more people are flocking to the internet each day seeking answers to real questions and concerns. People want to know where to eat, what to do for fun, how to fix their kitchen sink, where to go on vacation. YOU can answer these questions for them and you can gain customers to your business by doing so.

Learn from the Past

The key thing now, is for you to learn from your past mistakes and move forward with a new plan to promote your business online. At Skyhook, we take a very scientific approach to each website that we build and do marketing for. Oftentimes, we will take your existing website and help you determine how it can be better and what steps you can take on your own or hire us to do for you to make it better. There is no guessing involved in our process. We analyze each and every detail of your marketing campaign. We not only pick apart the entire online experience your business is/should by striving for, we also strive to understand fully your complete business model so that we can provide meaningful feedback and suggestions on how you can recreate that model through the internet and it’s many tools. We help you turn your previous online failures into striking success stories that make everyone happier.

If you never try, you will never succeed. However, chances are, if you HAVE tried, you have likely failed at times. What can you do now to turn those failures into future successes?