How to Run Marketing Experiments Without Losing Your Mind (Or Your Job)
Tips on staying current with marketing trends without succumbing to shiny new object syndrome
I was at a conference last month where a presenter asked the room of marketers “How many of you are using Snapchat for your brand?” About 75% of the room raised their hands.
He followed that by asking “How many of you hate using Snapchat?”
The same 75% raised their hands.
Turns out, this conference wasn’t an anomaly.
Being a marketer today means being constantly bombarded with new tools and channels.
HubSpot just released its 2017 State of Inbound, and experimentation with new channels is a hot topic. 39% of marketers are planning to add Facebook video to their content distribution strategy, 24% plan to add messaging apps, and 48% plan to add YouTube.
This is further complicated by the fact that pressure to get on board with new channels is often coming from the top. 32% of C-level executives want to add messaging apps to their marketing strategy, only 20% of individual contributors share their enthusiasm. 52% of C-level execs want YouTube in the mix, only 42% of individual contributors agree.
While there are benefits of working in a constantly changing industry — I’ve never met a bored marketer — it is also hard to know when to stick with tried and true marketing strategies versus experiment with new things. And it can be even harder when it’s your boss is pressuring you to both get results and test the unknowable.
Here are a few guidelines I use to figure out this balance…
1. Use tried and true strategies to cover your baseline targets, and experiments for additional upside.
As a marketer, I can’t afford to miss my targets, so I stick to what is working to hit our targets. I put 80–90% of my spend on channels that are predictable. At CrowdRiff, it’s certain paid channels, conferences, and the cost of developing and distributing content.
On the other hand, there are things we aren’t doing that may lead to unexpected breakthroughs. We pick one big experiment each quarter, and one small experiment each 1–2 weeks.
- A big experiment is a new channel, and something that needs time to build out and measure, e.g. a new omni-channel campaign against 100 target accounts.
- A small experiment is an incremental improvement to an existing channel, e.g. new creative for an existing FB ad or new copy for key landing pages.
2. When it comes to choosing which experiments to try, go back to marketing fundamentals — who is your customer? what do you want to say to them? what are the best channels through which to say it?
Running experiments is a good thing, but the choice of what to focus on is as important as the experiments themselves. For some reason when we jump into experiments we always forget these basics. The CEO may say “I want YouTube videos!” but it’s the marketers job to figure out if there’s anything interesting to say and if YouTube is the best format/channel through which to say it.
And what about your customers? What channels are they adopting? What kinds of personalities and behaviors do your customers have? Do they like to be on the cutting edge, and are the first to adopt new channels? or do they prefer to wait until something is more mainstream?
Answer these questions before you jump into the next new thing.
3. Then turn the lens to your own company — how do these channels fit with your brand and the unique skills of the people on your team?
At CrowdRiff, our product helps brands become better visual marketers. Our own brand is highly visual, and our personality is approachable, playful, and energetic. So for us, Instagram Stories is a great new channel for showcasing our culture, a culture which is not just appealing to future employees, but also a key reason why customers choose to work with us.
Not every channel or experiment can work for your brand. It’s trendy these days for tech companies to have casual personalities, but there are industries where customers may feel more comfortable with a channel and communication style that feels more buttoned down.
Your brand is created and brought to life by your people.
So don’t overlook the skills that exist inside your company when choosing which experiments to run. It may not make sense to experiment with a comic series if no one on your team has illustration skills. But maybe one of your Customer Success Managers is really great on camera. Why not make him the face of a new video series on an educational topic that your target audience could benefit from?
4. Finally, include the rest of your team and make sure you regularly share your plans and results with them.
Part of encouraging a culture of experimentation is to let other colleagues know what experiments are running, what you are trying to achieve, and what results you found. At CrowdRiff, we put this in a Trello board that everyone can see, and we share a high level overview in our weekly Town Hall meeting.
Ideas for experiments can come from anyone in the company, so keep a central system for receiving suggestions, and let people know the criteria for accepting or excluding something.
At our recent quarterly kickoff meeting for sales and marketing, I was amazed at the creative ideas that came out of our ideation session. Not all of them were appropriate to do this quarter, so we are sorting through the handful that we will run, and keeping the others in a Trello backlog so we can try them later.
Yes, things are changing.
Every single conversation I have with a marketer today includes some commentary on how quickly things are changing in our field, and the world we work in. We don’t have the luxury of sticking to only tried and true strategies. Make room for experiments without putting all your eggs in one basket, and get prepared to be surprised by what takes off and what flounders.
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