Experiment based digital strategy
Last Updated on February 7, 2022 by justin
In a rapidly changing world, no one can make long-term digital strategies anymore. The markets are simply moving too fast, so fast that the game plan may have changed from one week to another – making your annual plan not worth the paper it was written on next year, or even next quarter.
How should you think before your product launch and with your digital marketing?
If it is no longer possible to plan, you must instead experiment.
Thankfully, we have the scientific method. If we assume that we can not predict whether a strategy will work, then we can quickly develop a number of hypotheses, and can do small, quick experiments to either validate or falsify them.
- The first key word here is speed. An experiment should preferably run over a couple of days rather than months, so try to take large experiments and break them down or try them in a different context. Are you going to test a new text on the website? Why not create an ad on Google or Facebook and A / B test the text there instead, and save days if not weeks on development, design and copy. Not to mention calendar time. If it is possible to get an insight this week instead of in 10 weeks, it means that we can take the next step earlier. It is this mentality that creates the hockey club graphs of growth that we see in the giants – Dropbox, Facebook, Uber and others.
- The second keyword is quantity. In our experience, what has the greatest impact on a company’s growth is the number of experiments performed.
The strongest KPI for digital growth
The strongest KPI that is correlated to your (data-driven) growth rate is the number of experiments performed per selected unit of time.
- This is how you perform data-driven growth optimization.
- This is how you move forward in this, often confusing, digital world.
- That is what Growth Hacking is in our opinion.
However, it’s a little more complicated than just throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what’s stuck, but the spaghetti has to be thrown. Every iteration, every little improvement, every little insight that takes us forward, leads to incremental growth. It is important to point out that with the right skills and knowledge, you can increase your chances properly.
Interest on interest
Many, small, incremental increases over time; one percent here, two percent there, three percent there, gives interest-on-interest effect. So get started and experiment broadly. Assemble a Growth Team, develop some hypotheses, and work hard with product, market, channel selection and content, or whatever it is. Collect the data, interpret it, make decisions. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.
How many experiments do you come up with?
A hint, it’s about number per year you are behind, while if it’s number per week you are at the forefront.