Rational Decision Making: The 7-Step Process for Making Logi…

Psychology tells us that emotions drive our behavior, while logic only justifies our actions after the fact. Marketing confirms this theory. Humans associate the same personality traits with brands that they associate with people – choosing your favorite brand is like choosing your best friend or significant other. We go with the option that makes us feel something.

But emotions can cloud your logic, especially when you need to do something that may cause internal pain, like giving constructive criticism, or moving on from something you’re attached to, like your team. Removing a favorite topic from the content calendar.

However, there is a way to suppress this emotional bias. It is a thought process that is completely objective and data-based. This is called the rational decision making model, and it will help you make logically correct decisions even in situations with major implications, such as moving your overall blogging strategy forward.

But before we learn each step of this powerful process, let’s look at what rational decision making actually is and why it’s important.

Making rational decisions is an important skill, especially in the digital marketing industry. Humans are naturally emotional, so our biases and beliefs can blur our perception of reality. Fortunately, data sharpens our perspective. By showing us how our audience actually interacts with our brand, data frees us from relying on our perceptions to determine what our audience likes about us.

Rational Decision Making Model: 7 Easy Steps (+ Examples)

1. Validate and define your problem.

To prove that you really have a problem, you need evidence of it. Most marketers think that data is the silver bullet that can fix any problem in our strategy, but really you need to extract insights from your data to prove anything. If you don’t do this, you’re just looking at a bunch of numbers packed into a spreadsheet.

To pinpoint your specific problem, collect as much data as you can from the area you need and analyze it to detect any alarming patterns or trends.

Example:

“After analyzing our blog traffic reports, we now know why our traffic has been stagnant over the past year – our organic traffic increases slightly each month but our email and social traffic decreases.”

2. Research and brainstorm possible solutions to your problem.

Expanding your pool of possible solutions increases your chances of solving your problem. To find as many possible solutions as possible, you should gather as much information about your problem as you can from your knowledge and from the internet. You can also brainstorm with others to find more possible solutions.

Example:

Possible solution 1: “We can focus on increasing organic, email and social traffic at the same time.”

Possible solution 2: “We can focus on growing email and social traffic at the same time – organic traffic is already increasing month over month while email and social traffic is decreasing.”

Possible solution 3: “We can just focus on growing social traffic – it’s easier to grow social traffic than growing email and organic traffic at the same time. We also have 2 million followers on Facebook, so we can get our posts to a lot of readers Can.”

Possible solution 4: “We can just focus on increasing email traffic – increasing email traffic is easier than increasing social and organic traffic at the same time. We also have 250,000 blog subscribers, so we can get our posts out to lots of readers. “

Possible Solution 5: “We can focus only on increasing organic traffic – increasing organic traffic is easier than increasing social and email traffic at the same time. We also implemented a pillar-cluster model to increase the authority of our domains, so that we Google can attract a large number of readers.

3. Set success and failure standards for your potential solutions.

Setting a threshold to measure the success and failure of your solutions allows you to determine which solutions can actually solve your problem. However, your bar of success should not be too high. You will never be able to find a solution. But if your standards are realistic, quantitative, and focused, you will be able to find one.

Example:

“If one of our solutions increases our total traffic by 10%, we should consider it a viable way to overcome our traffic plateau.”

4. Explain the possible consequences of each solution.

Next, you should determine the consequences of each of your solutions. To do this, create a table of strengths and weaknesses for each option and compare them with each other. You should also prioritize your solutions by listing them from best chance to worst chance of solving the problem.

Example:

Possible Result 1: ‘There can be huge benefits from increasing organic, email and social traffic at the same time, but our team doesn’t have enough time or resources to optimize all three channels.’

Possible Result 2: “Increasing email and social traffic at the same time will result in a modest increase in overall traffic – both channels account for only 20% of our total traffic.”

Possible Result 3: “Increasing social traffic by posting one blog post per day on Facebook is challenging because the platform does not boost links in the news feed and the channel only accounts for 5% of our blog traffic. Focusing only on social will yield minimal results.”

Possible Result 4: “Increasing email traffic by sending two emails per day to our blog subscribers is challenging because we already send subscribers one email every day and the channel only accounts for 15% of our blog traffic. Focusing on email will yield minimal results.”

Possible Result 5: “Increasing organic traffic by targeting high search volume keywords for all of our new posts is the easiest way to increase our blog’s overall traffic. We have high domain authority, Google refers 80% of our total traffic, and we just implemented a columnar-cluster model. “Focusing on organic will yield the most results.”

5. Choose the best solution and test it.

Based on your evaluation of possible solutions, choose the best solution and test it. You can start monitoring your initial results during this phase as well.

Example:

“Focusing on organic traffic appears to be the most effective and realistic play for us. Let’s test an organic-only strategy where we only create new content that has current or potential search volume and fits our columnar cluster model.

6. Track and analyze your test results.

Track and analyze your results to see if your solution really solved your problem.

Example:

“After a month of testing, our blog traffic increased by 14% and our organic traffic increased by 21%.”

7. Implement the solution or perform a new test.

If your potential solution passes your test and solves your problem, then it is the most logical decision for you. You should apply it to completely solve your current problem or any other problem related to it in future. If the solution did not solve your problem, try any other possible solutions you discovered.

Example:

“The results of focusing only on organic exceeded the limits of our success. From now on, we are moving to an organic-only strategy, where we will only create new blog content that has current or future search volume and fits into our pillar cluster model.

Avoid bias with a rational decision making process

As humans, it’s natural for our emotions to dominate your decision-making process. And that’s okay. Sometimes, emotional decisions are better than logical ones. But when you really need to prioritize logic over emotions, equipping your brain with a rational decision-making model can help you suppress your emotion bias and be as objective as possible.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.