AAAH! IT’S ALIVEEE! 🧪

Marketing experiments are a pain to setup. 😅 

They’re often messy, unwieldy, and require far more data and time than you (think) you have.

sigh.

They’re also one of the best ways (and i’d argue predictably the fastest) to find a new marketing channel that works.

Who this is for:

• you have a strong idea (startup) or clear definition (scaling) of their ICP

• you have your basic foundations setup (website, customer research, email sending capability, product data metrics)

• you (or someone you love) can commit to planning, setting up, running, tweaking, and reviewing an experiment over 4-6 weeks → these are not “set it and forget it” when you do it the first time because you’re sorting a lot out

Some terminology to keep in mind

An experiment =/= a campaign.

• an experiment is to test to see if your hunch is correct in dollars and cents over a short period of time (usually 4-6 weeks)

• a campaign is a multi-channel push for something you already know works (both channels and thing you’re launching)

You shouldn’t be experimenting with campaigns unless you have money to blow and/or a marketer to set them up.

Campaigns are essentially running multiple large experiments simultaneously and require detailed planning to pull off well and multiple channels you know work.

Now let’s start mixing marketing chemicals!

1. Set (a measurable!) experiment goal

What are you trying to find out?

An experiment should have a testable hypothesis, one includes:

• what you plan on doing (commenting on Reddit posts and in communities)

• where you plan on doing (r/HR, r/jobs, Slack communities of HR professionals, etc)

• what your goal is (revenue, engagement, organic interest, traffic, CTR…)

• how long you are going to run the experiment to see if it works (4-6 weeks is a good range)

• what your data points (KPI’s) are for measuring whether you’ve hit your goal (these should tie back to your goals and channels - if you can’t track views on a slack post, then don’t make “traffic” a core KPI)

To quote The Incredibles, “Be specific Bob.”

An experiment is a success when you have reliable results that can be used to support or refute the hypothesis.

2. Do your (customer) research

Now that you know what you’re trying to accomplish in clear, specific terms, you know what to look for in your existing customer research to help cut out some of the uncertainty.

You’ve probably left yourself some breadcrumbs and didn’t know it!

if you’re testing a channel

• what has been said about this channel in previous interviews, discovery calls and support tickets?

• are any of our existing power users or champions active in those channels (that we know of)?

• what formats work well in this channel that we’ve already created for a different use?

if you’re testing a target audience

• who in our current customers or leads is in that target audience?

• where did they say they hang out?

• are they clustered in a specific industry or physical location?

if you’re testing a new use cases

• who of our current customers are using the product for this use case?

• what industry are they in?

• how are they describing their use case?

• have they shared their use case publicly? where, if so?

• have they asked support questions around getting this use case setup

3. Design your experiment

Just like with marketing as a whole, there are core foundations to every marketing experiment.

Hehe, it all comes back to foundations!!! 🧱 

Think of it as a foundations side-quest.

Here’s what that looks like

4. Fill in your foundation gaps

If you’re looking at that table ^ and thinking to yourself, “huh, i need a use case specific landing page, but my website barely works”, then this is where the need to do a marketing experiment can be the great push forward to knock out the rest of the stuff that’s not working.

Look at the spots in your foundation that are wobbly bowling pins and knock them out now.

Here’s exactly how to fix those faulty foundations! (with the resources linked to help!):

resources links:

• Customer research

• Branding

• Website

• CRM

• Emails

5. Build the pieces for the experiment

okay, you’ve fixed any missing foundations, you know what you’re building - now it’s time to setup the experiment beakers!

• Record the demo looms, or use superdemo if it doesn’t need much explanation

• Write the copy for the landing page and get it designed and stood up (use a clear name and make sure you have UTM tracking setup)

• Build the “jump in” scenarios in the product so people can get started easily

• Choose which of your pricing plans you want to highlight for this experiment

• Draft the post or written copy for your distribution channel

• Write the nurturing email series for people who try the product but don’t convert (here’s a template)

• Go through the experiment from the customer’s perspective and see if there’s any logic holes somewhere

• Get your tracking setup (whole issue on this next week!) for each step so you know where people are dropping off and why (if possible)

6. run baby run

Post. comment. send. track.
See what happens.
Be prepared to report back.

7. see what you’re workin’ with

Next week’s issue is going to be all about the measuring side of running an experiment, so stay tuned for a lot more detail!

Aight, you’ve hit your output metric or the end of your time window.
See what the results are.

• If you have clear data for some, but not all of your metrics, then give the experiment another two weeks

• If you have clear numbers for each KPI and it hit your revenue or end-goal - YAY! Expand the number of distribution channels or increase the amount of content and see if that will help you grow further.

If you have almost no clear indicators, then go back to the white board and start on a new experiment. I’d advise not scrapping everything and instead looking at your data for each step.

• Did you get lots of initial interest but it died out at when they hit the product use case? then tweak the use case, and leave the content and distribution part be.

• Did the majority of visitors click on pricing and bounce? Then play with monthly over annual plans or test a discount.

And leave the email sequence in place! (unless it has terrible open rates, in which case, that might be part of the problem)

It might be that it’s just going to take more time - and that will show in the lagging indicators weeks later, thanks to those emails.

Now go off into the world, and give your creations LIFEEEEEE!

We’ll see you and your inbox next week!

Cheers!

Sophia ⚡👩🏽‍💻 & Aelia 🪄🧕🏽

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