How To Adopt A Test And Learn Marketing Mindset
Do you often feel like your marketing efforts are hit and miss?
As soon as you find a strategy that seems to work, the rules change, and you have to go back to the drawing board. You’re not alone. Marketing is a fast-paced game these days, and getting it perfect is damn near impossible.
So, what should you do instead?
Well, you forget about perfection and embrace curiosity with a test and learn marketing mindset.
Test and learn marketing turns both successes and failures into valuable insights to guide your marketing in the right direction. It allows you the freedom to experiment, innovate and keep up with the ever-changing digital environment – minus the guesswork. Want to learn more about this marketing process used by some of the most successful organisations in the world?
Below, I’ll tell you what the test and learn marketing approach is, how it can help your marketing strategy, and how to use it in your own business.
How To Adopt A Test And Learn Marketing Mindset
What Is The Test And Learn Approach?
The test and learn marketing approach is all about controlled experimentation. It removes the guesswork from your strategy because it uses concrete data to gain insights into the success or failure of each experiment. Innovation is essential in today’s fast-moving world, and the test and learn approach allows you to
innovate, measure, and improve rapidly. Instead of making assumptions based on opinion or gut instinct, you can craft detailed marketing campaigns from the insights you extract from your data.
How Experimentation Can Help Your Marketing
There are a few ways that experimentation can help your marketing.
They are:
Save money
Instead of pouring money into extensive campaigns that you think will work, you can do mini- experiments with different techniques, measure the results, and invest money in the strategies that have been proven to work.
Save time and energy
The numbers will show you exactly what works and what doesn’t for your audience. If something isn’t working, you’ll know to cross it off the list and move on instead of wasting your time trying to flog a dead horse.
Grow your business via your marketing campaigns
By trying different things and measuring the results, you will see exactly what you need to know to reach and connect with your audience. You’ll be able to invest in creating the right content for the right platforms, connecting with your target customers and converting leads.
How To Develop A Test And Learn Marketing Strategy
When establishing your marketing strategy, get your foundations up and running first, then branch out from there. When you’re comfortable with the basics, you can start getting a little experimental.
You can apply this technique to any of your marketing activities, such as:
● Comparing the value of leads from different channels
● Testing the effectiveness of different types of content (videos vs infographics vs photos, for example)
● Finding out what content topics result in the highest engagement
● Test whether a new platform can add value to your strategy
● See if your email list responds better to longer or shorter emails
● Trial different layouts/fonts/styles for landing pages or blog posts
Here’s How To Get Started:
Ready to kick off your test and learn marketing strategies? Then here’s what you need to do to get started:
Specify your objectives
To ensure your advertising is a success, you need to get clear on your objectives before working on the actual advertising component. Do you want to get more engagement on social media (how much)? Are you aiming for more open rates on your email newsletter or hoping to increase your CTR (click-through-rate) or CRO (conversion rate optimization)?
Determine your KPIs
Now that you know what your objectives will be, you can decide which KPIs (key performance indicators) to watch to measure the effectiveness of your strategy.
Test things in a controlled way
Don’t get too carried away and try to make too many changes at once. Be strategic: trial a tactic and test to see if it works before moving onto something else.
Keep improving
Test and learn marketing isn’t about finding what works and sticking to it eternally. Things can change quickly, so it’s vital to keep measuring your results and trying new things.
Will It Work?
Some of the most successful brands in the world credit their success to a test and learn marketing strategy.
Amazon, Facebook and eBay are constantly testing, measuring, and improving their sites and services to stay relevant and meet the needs of their audience.
But the beauty of the test and learn approach is that you don’t have to be a bigshot to experience the benefits. In fact, this experimental strategy is ideal for smaller businesses with smaller budgets. One of the most important things to remember is that advertising does not occur in a silo. It needs to work within your whole marketing landscape. As well as being on the right channels, you must consider the bigger picture of your entire customer pathway in the process.
If you would like help getting started with your test and learn strategies, reach out to me today. Book a 30 min discovery call and let’s see if we are a good fit to work together.
