Most CMOs understand the importance of an experimental mindset – from comparisons of email subject lines, ad campaigns, and CTAs to landing page designs and color palettes.
At Maxamy, we agree! At the pace consumer behavior is evolving today, a test-and-learn mindset is essential for marketers. So, don’t be shy! Controlled marketing experiments remove biases and help you better understand your audience with proven data so you know what works and what doesn’t for future campaigns.
What are marketing experiments?
Hard work goes into each and every marketing campaign, so a marketer’s top goal is getting the highest possible ROI. But how can they know a campaign will be effective? While there is no way to know for sure, there is a way to estimate if campaign strategies will be effective. This is where marketing experiments come into play.
A marketing experiment is a form of research that identifies new strategies for future campaigns or validates existing activities that appeal to potential customers. Marketing experiments let you test, analyze, refine and apply the results to improve success rates and determine if certain elements are worth the effort.
Quick Tips for Running B2B Marketing Experiments
Here are some quick tips for setting up your own marketing experiments — especially for B2B companies to find proven lead generation data in the scaling phase.
- Be sure experiments are collaborative, well-designed and efficient.
Depending on what you’re testing, this may be a cross-functional project requiring collaboration with other teams, such as marketing, IT or analytics. Be sure everyone contributes and stays up-to-date on details, such as the hypothesis, goal, timeline, duration, metrics and results. - Brainstorm and prioritize ideas, focusing on one at a time.
The first step is to determine what you want to achieve. A good place to start is diving into historical data and comparing it to your ideas and current goals to your priorities. Then rank your ideas by relevance, timelines and return on investment (ROI). Now, pick one idea and focus on it. - Make your hypothesis, then collect research and define metrics.
Create the hypothesis you are trying to prove that can be tested. You’ll know it’s testable because producing different results can be proved or disproved. Then research to see what experiments have already been conducted to understand potential outcomes fully. This also should help you narrow down your metrics that indicate if your hypothesis is true or not. - Keep objectives concise while testing out different tools, tactics and strategies.
It’s time to create and execute the experiment. A/B testing is one of the best ways to prove your hypothesis. It helps you compare the original version to the newly changed item. - Execute, analyze results, and repeat!
This is where you learn what works and what doesn’t by gathering enough evidence to analyze the results using the metrics you determined in step one. The results tell you if your hypothesis is true or false and if you accept or reject it. If you have other theories, work through them in the same way.
Take away your finds and use them to inform your marketing efforts going forward. If you need help setting up your marketing experiments, reach out today and speak to a strategist about how Maxamy can help.
