by Ron Richards, President, ResultsLab

Hidden Results Factors
Let’s talk about an issue that I think about every day -- and that my clients now think a lot about as well.  It’s one of the most misunderstood, missed-bet issues in all of marketing.  I would say not one person in a hundred is onto what I’m about to show you.

It’s easy to grasp, even though it’s a bit abstract -- expressed through a simple little equation.  I know it will be worth your following this, because it’s a key to all your searching for improvement opportunities in any communication tool. You might want to print this page, so you can have the following in front of you as you read on.

The Results Equation

The Results Equation:      R = F1 x F2 x F3 x F4 x ...... x F20

Example of Multipliers:    R = 1.5 x .2 x 2.0 x .4 x 3.0 = .72

With zeros in equation:    R = 1.5 x 0.0 x 2.0 x 0.0 x 3.0 = 0.0

Amplifiers (missed bets) -- are greater than 1.0:
Can be 1.5, 2, 5, 10 fold, etc.

Attenuators -- are less than 1.0::
Can be .7, .3, .2 fold, etc.

Disablers (poison language & graphics):
Can be 0.0 fold -- virtually no response.

Multiplier Types: 
Amplifiers, and Attenuators
On the Web, let’s suppose you’re getting certain current results -- pageviews, clickthroughs, revenues, percent selling expense, and so on. Whatever result you have, let’s suppose that result is .72 times what you hoped for...

That baseline .72 result is being caused by a bunch of hidden causal factors such as grabber quality, design quality, linking quality, price, message, how you answered qualms, how you created urgencies, how you created competitive distinction, etc.

The message itself may have 5 or 10 factors within it. All those variables are the factors in the results equation, F1.....F20, in our little model.

Unfortunately, all you know is that some of those things will end up working better and some end up working poorer than hoped for -- in their contribution to your overall .72 results.  So, without your knowing it, hiding in the results equation are some multipliers that do better than you expected.  They may come out 1.5 times better -- 2 times better -- 3 times better.  I call these helpful multipliers -- that are bigger than 1.0 -- amplifiers.

And you’ve got some other hidden multipliers that are harmful, especially if you didn’t yet produce an integrated mix of changes in the last n-dimensional promotional change you made. So you’ve got some .2 factors and some .4 factors.  I call these harmful multipliers -- that are less than 1.0 -- attenuators.

The result, R, is the product of all the factors in the equation -- all the amplifiers and all the attenuators.  It’s the net, compounded effect you’ve been living with.

In my little example above (which only shows 5 factors for simplification), you have a product of all the amplifiers and attenuators that is .72.

You wish you knew in your Web development which of your factors were the massive amplifiers and which were the massive attenuators. You wish you could purge the attenuators.  The goal would be to enhance all the factors in the equation, creating a great deal of improvement in the product of the factors, the result.

This entire ResultsLab Web site talks about how to create such changes. But first, let’s look at why the situation is even more challenging than I’ve just described it.

Removing the Zeros in the Results Equation
I meet marketing people all the time who tell a story (and I can tell such stories myself) of having done something in marketing where they expected, for example, a thousand responses but instead they got 2 or 1 or no responses!

They would have understood how they could get 700 or 500 or even 300, but virtually no responses is a shock beyond comprehension. They look for gross errors in the mechanics: “Did the subscriber email not go out?  Is the site accessible? They begin to fantasize those extreme scenarios, ignoring the possibility that the navigation structure, the content, and the graphic design could cause such poor results.  But the cause is typically not in the mechanics...

Usually what happened is that there was a zero in the results equation.  Typically it’s a qualm -- a killer qualm -- that virtually every human being responds to and says, “I won’t visit (or drill down, respond, or buy) because of that.”

Of course, it’s sufficiently bad for someone to say, “I won’t act now because of that.  I have to look into it further.”  As we all know, if somebody doesn’t respond quickly to your offering on the Web or anywhere else, it gets lost in all that clutter and most of those visitors will never come back.

So, here’s what diligent marketers do if they realize there must be a zero somewhere in the equation.  They say, “Damn, this product is good. I’m going to find out what happened.”  They do research, they find the killer qualm, they develop an answer to the killer qualm.  (I’m oversimplifying because the zeros can be all sorts of things, lack of urgency, lack of competitive distinction, etc.)

So, at best they find a killer qualm and they fix the element in their Web site or ad.  But when they publish again, with the same high hopes they had originally, they get zero again!  At this point, most marketing executives give up on the medium, the product, the price, the agency, etc.  This is tragic; they could still get high results, because the problem is usually elsewhere as we’ll see.

Why do they still have zero result?  It’s because there’s another damn zero in the equation. In typical rescue projects I’ve consulted on, I’ve found 3, 5, even 7 zeros that needed to be identified.    (Of course, the same concept applies when finding attenuators, just not quite so dramatically as finding zeros.  And everyone has several attenuators!)

When you remove the zeros, suddenly something surprising happens. You get the old thousand responses you hoped for. Maybe it’s five thousand now.

The Silver-Bullet Fallacy
When you go to your colleague and you say, “You know, I’m very excited about the Web.  The costs of doing things there are so low.  Let’s take something that’s worked elsewhere and bring it over to the Web.”

And your colleague says, “You know, I just don’t see any factor here that’s of big enough importance to be worth our investing in this at this time.” 

Or maybe you have something that’s way undershooting your goals, and someone is saying they don’t see any improvement that can make enough difference.

This is the Fallacy of the Silver Bullet -- that you have to find one big factor.  Now that we’ve talked about the results equation with 20 or 40 factors in it, let’s think instead about many factors.  For an entrepreneur going into a new medium, it’s not hard for us to create 1.3 multipliers.  And six 1.3 multipliers multiply out to a 5-times result.  That’s what we need to look for -- developing many multipliers and the purging of many big attenuators and of course the zero’s.

Purging Attenuators Is
Like Finding Amplifiers
Notice purging something that has attenuated results by a factor of .5x is as powerful as finding a missed bet that can amplify results by 2x when you incorporate it. Either improvement multiplies your results by 2x.

Realizing that there are likely dozens of such opportunities, and the massive combined effect they can have, is key to understanding why my constant goal of  “multiplying results by 2 to 5 fold” can be realistic for you.

Setting your sights towards that goal is realistic once you (1) grasp how amplifiers and attenuators have compounded effects. (2) know that they’re ubiquitous, (3) know how to identify them, and (4) know how to improve them.

You’ll find dozens of potential amplifier that can be incorporated into your Web site, and attenuators that can be purged, in my Improvement Insights sections.

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