Marketing channels and media selection has been evolving for a long time but, like everything, all campaigns start with an idea, an objective and a little bit of hope.
Test and learn is something that many large companies rely on to try different marketing strategies, before launching it on their entire customer base.
The goal of a test and learn campaign is exactly what it’s called – to test a scenario and to learn from it. I try to live by the belief that you never have a bad day if you’ve learnt something and you an certainly learn a lot from running various marketing campaigns.
Why run a test and learn campaign?
A test and learn marketing campaign can help you to gain insights into various “new” or “changed” elements of your business that you can’t ascertain through simple research. Things like new product, new marketing channel, new imagery, new response options, essentially any new elements that you’ve introduced into your business, can be assessed using a test and learn campaign.
How do these campaigns work?
The great thing about a test and learn campaign is that you are actually running a live campaign, just to a selected group. All of these campaigns should be set up with a control group versus the trial group. Your control group is a mix of customers, like the ones included in the trial, who don’t receive the new element but continue to receive things the way that they have before. These customers are generally grouped together and quarantined from the rest of your customer base. The trial customers are the ones who receive the “new” element, whether this be a new product offer, price change, exposure to a different channel.
Why do a test and learn campaign?
In a constantly changing market, with increased competition and more aware consumers, it’s hard to know whether a campaign is going to drive the results you need. A lot of campaigns will require large investment, whether in time or money, and you aren’t always guaranteed to achieve what you need to make the campaign worthwhile. Creating a test and learn campaign will allow you to test the critical elements that will provide insight into whether your concept will create return. It’s essentially reducing the risk of your planned marketing activity and setting a benchmark for you to track too.
How can you measure test and learn campaigns?
As long as you create the test and learn correctly, setting a control versus test group, you can measure the results against each other. Setting parameters such as response rate, response time, average transaction value and offer take up are simple gauges that you can use. You need to make sure that, however you receive responses, that you can measure them. Using a unique response channel, ie.e phone number, email address, exclusive to the trial participants will provide clear measurement. You need to make sure that your campaign is offer and date led. By providing customers with an incentive to call within a certain period helps you track responses. Without this your campaign purely becomes an awareness or brand campaign that you can’t truly measure.
Should you always run a test and learn campaign?
As much as we would like to think that it’s viable to run a test and learn for every great new idea, it’s simply not. Test and learn do cost money and take time, two things you possibly don’t have a lot of. My recommendation, do a risk analysis first. Consider what would happen if you don’t achieve the results, if you don’t do anything or if you delay doing something. If any of these are going to put you at greater risk, consider starting with a small campaign. Don’t blanket your whole customer base, just market to those who you feel you will get the best response from. Make sure your offer isn’t too extreme so not to alienate or offend anyone and make sure your response channels are easy and appealing to the audience. As with any marketing, just tread carefully and don’t be to extreme too soon so that you can continue to maintain and grow with your customer base.
So, in summary, test and learn campaigns can teach you lots and really set you up for success, however, these should not be done at the jeopardy of just getting the job done. As a small business, you don’t have the luxury of lots of resources to make things happen so, sometimes, you just have to make them happen yourself. As long as you review and plan properly, you should have limited risk.
Good Luck!
The Marketing Elf
The Marketing Elf 