,

After what has been several months, I finally watched another game of football live.

I don't know what it is.

But over the years, I've noticed that whenever I get invested in football teams enough to watch their matches...

Especially when it's my favourite team, they somehow end up having bad results.

I mean, it's not like I've never watched a match that my team won.

But more often than not, they normally end up losing or drawing the match.

Especially when I really want them to win, just like today.

Frankly I'm tired of the whole thing.

What do you think the problem could be?

Am I cursed? 😪😔

Because I don't know what to think anymore at this point.

Case in point, today, I was watching Manchester City play in the Manchester derby against United.

And I painfully watched as Guardiola's men threw away a one goal lead and lost the match within the space of 5 minutes before the end of the match.

What made it more painful is that Guardiola is a legendary football coach (arguably the best football coach of all time).

And yet, in the past 11 games his team has played this season, they have won only one match, drawing a couple of them and losing the rest.

As a result, a lot of people are beginning to doubt Guardiola's genius — the same coach who's won the Premier League back to back in the past four years.

And his circumstances don't seem to help matters either.

Because it seems like everything he's been trying doesn't work.

Same way many marketers sometimes deploy all their knowledge and skill of Copywriting and Marketing on their audience.

And yet somehow, they still get poor results.

Does this mean they are not good marketers?

Not necessarily.

Here's the bitter truth.

Sometimes, marketing can be counterintuitive.

In marketing, the market (your audience) holds most — if not all — of the cards.

Which means they decide whether or not they respond to your product or your marketing strategies.

And because they're humans and not robots, we can't always predict with 100% certainty how the market will behave.

We can only rely on our knowledge of human Psychology, Persuasion and data from the past that tells us about our market's behaviour.

So what happens when you deploy all of your strategies using all your knowledge and it doesn't work?

Personally, there are two things I think you can do.

First, go back to the basics.

Go back to the fundamental principles of sales and marketing.

Principles such as finding a hungry market, finding out what they want and giving it to them in the form of a product or solution.

Chances are, you're just overthinking and overcomplicating things.

You can never go wrong with the basics.

Perhaps Pep could benefit from trying this out too.

Second, don't be afraid to try new things.

As I've said, the market determines what works and what doesn't.

And when what used to work doesn't work anymore,

The only way to figure out what can work is sometimes to try new stuff out.

I mean, who knows, you just might hit a goldmine by doing things differently.

A little creativity won't hurt.

Yeah, it can be scary to try new things, especially if no one else has done it before.

It's like treading in uncharted territory.

But then, what's the worst that could happen?

You either win, or you learn.

Either way, you don't lose.

And yeah, just maybe Pep could benefit from this advice too.

Anyhow, I really hope he gets over this rough patch with his team quickly.

Because I can't bear to see his name being ridiculed anymore.

Anyway, I hope you got the lesson I was trying to pass across.

Do have a lovely night ahead.

Yours for going back to the basics and trying new things.

— KD™