I lent a bike to a friend this week. The bike had a flat. The next day, she laughed about how it took longer to ride the bike with the flat than it would have taken her to walk home.

I see this in marketing too. So many times we stubbornly try to ride on a flat marketing tire, instead of changing our methods to find a quicker and better way to get to our destination. We could get a pump, fill up the tire, and then ride off. Or we could walk. Or we could pick up the bike and take it on a bus or train.

In marketing lingo, the exercise of changing and improving tactics to get better results is called “conversion rate optimization.” There are many ways to improve your sales conversion and there are just as many excuses businesses use to not do anything about it. We should never stick with something that doesn’t work, thinking that once we get where we’re going, we’ll fix it. “Then” may be too late.

We hear this too frequently, “We’ll get a professional website after we get more sales.” We’re even guilty of it at Lightspan. We went the low-cost route on two website redesigns until our website was in such bad shape that it was crashing once a week. Then our email subscription stopped working and we were losing valuable subscribers. Which reminds me, welcome to our brand new website! But I digress.

“We’ll do digital marketing later” is another “excuse” I hear all the time. Or, “we’ll get an intern for now, and once we start making money we’ll hire the real pros”.

Doing more with less is great. But if we try to do more with less without changing anything else, we shouldn’t expect more (sales, subscribers, donors, etc.). Trying to do more with less without changing your way is a sure formula for getting less.

Some stubbornly insist on riding on that flat tire. I want to encourage you to either get a pump, start walking or catch a bus. You’ll get to your destination faster.