Why Growth Marketing without conscious experimentation is Nonsense
Understand why purposeful testing is key to growth marketing success.
I was always told that marketing was about trying stuff, measuring it, and iterating on that until you got a winner. I was also always told, "The only difference between a mad scientist and an experienced marketer is that the scientist knows when to stop." The idea of having no control over how experiments are run or what is being tested seemed crazy (and still does). This is why growth has become my passion - because it lets me have full control over experiments and measure them in exactly the way I want to.
Here’s my op-ed on why it's nonsense to talk about growth marketing without consciously experimenting!
Growth marketing is the process of growing your business by creating a repeatable, scalable, and measurable process that leads to increased customer acquisition and growth.
It's not just about getting more customers; it's about getting better customers. Growth marketing focuses on building an engaged audience through experimentation with content, social media, and advertising channels.
Growth is not linear: You will not always be able to predict what will work best for your business or how much time it will take for you to see results from each experiment. You need to be able to test ideas quickly before you scale them--and this requires experimentation as part of your growth strategy!
Growth marketing involves the systematic approach of acquiring new customers, retaining existing ones, and improving revenue. It encompasses all aspects of marketing that contribute to business growth, from lead generation and customer retention to revenue optimization.
Growth marketing is a continuous conscious process that requires experimentation to achieve success.
Experimentation is critical for growth because it allows you to test different strategies and tactics to find what works best for your company or product. Experimentation can lead to success but also failure, so it's important that you stay committed throughout the entire experiment process, even if the results are not what was expected at first glance (or even after several rounds).
Experimentation is the foundation of growth marketing.
Growth marketers should be constantly testing new marketing strategies and tactics, measuring their impact on key business metrics, and then repeating the process until they find something that works well enough to scale. This is how you break through in a competitive market--by being smarter than your competitors about how to grow your business.
The most successful growth teams have an experimentation-first mentality: they're constantly collecting data, analyzing it to identify opportunities for improvement, and then acting on those opportunities by implementing changes based on what they've learned from A/B tests (or other forms of experimentation).
So, why do you need to create a culture of experimentation?
A culture of experimentation is important for two reasons: it allows you to learn faster and creates a culture of learning and growth.
When you have a culture of experimentation, everyone on your team knows that they can take risks, experiment with new ideas, and try out new things without fear of failure or judgment from their peers. This creates an environment where people are constantly sharing their ideas with each other--which leads to better decisions being made based on real data rather than assumptions or guesses (and when those assumptions are wrong). It also helps you understand your customers better by allowing them to play a role in shaping future products or services through user testing and surveys.
How to Create a Culture of Experimentation
Creating a culture of experimentation is not easy, but it's essential.
The first step is to ensure that everyone on your team understands the importance of experimentation and how to run experiments. This can be done through training sessions and workshops where you explain the benefits of growth marketing through different case studies.
Once you've created this understanding among your team members, ensure they're involved in running experiments themselves! Everyone must have hands-on experience with experimentation so they can learn from their mistakes (and successes).
The next step is to set up a system for running experiments. This can be as simple as creating a shared Google Doc where everyone can add ideas for experiments and then vote on which ones should be run.
The final step is to create a feedback loop for your experiments. This means that you track the results of each investigation before moving on to the next one. You can do this by setting up an analytics dashboard in Google Analytics or Amplitude that shows how well each experiment performed.
The most successful marketing teams constantly collect, analyze, and act on data.
Data is the foundation of growth marketing--it fuels your experiments and helps you make better decisions.
Data is a tool for experimentation because it allows you to test assumptions about your product or service in real-time before committing resources to those ideas. For example, if I'm working on a new app feature and want to know if people will use it before building it out entirely? Or maybe I'm thinking about changing the pricing structure, but I don't know if my customers will be willing to pay more. Data can help answer these questions by allowing me to run split tests (and other types) where we compare two or more versions side-by-side to see which one performs better before making permanent changes.
Experimentation is Human. So are Mistakes
Experimentation is a human activity. It's not just something you do in the lab or on an Excel sheet but also in your life.
If you've never experimented before, I'm sorry to tell you that your life has been boring. You might think that experimentation is only for scientists and engineers who work on rockets and nuclear reactors--but no! Experiment is for everyone because it's about learning from mistakes and making discoveries based on those mistakes (or successes).
Experimentation means taking risks and big bets on things that might fail but could also be huge successes if they work out well enough. Experimentation means being brave enough to try new things even though there may be setbacks along the way (and sometimes even total failures). Experiment means being honest about what works well versus what doesn't, so we can learn from successes AND failures when trying out new ideas/products/etcetera!
Growth marketing is about experimentation. It would be best to create a culture of experimentation to be successful. This means that your marketing team should constantly be testing new ideas, even if it means failing sometimes.