How to Build a Process for Growth Experiments. And once you get there, our new 2017 Marketing Experiments Calendar can help you build a backlog of ideas, design and prioritize your experiments, and record your results all in one place. How to Build a Process for Growth Experiments To grow, you have find ways to experiment. But the goals of any given experiment can't just be "growth" -- because growth along isn't measurable. Hypothesis: By using pop-up modal CTAs, we will increase our conversions from a blog post to a landing page by >2%, with statistically significant results. Once you’ve enabled brainstorming and hypothesis-writing on your team, you’ll might find that you have more ideas than you know what to do with. While there are many ways to do that, at HubSpot, we often use the PIE method - “Priority, Importance, Ease.” We execute this method by compiling all of our ideas into one document and then rate, on a scale of 1-10, each project in the categories of Priority, Importance, and Ease. What do my results mean? For example, you could create a document where you track all of your A/B tests from your landing pages or all of your tests on CTAs. Luckily, we've created a Growth Marketing Experiment Template based on this process that you can use and customize for your own internal process.
When you work inside a business, it can feel like all anyone talks about is growth. Revenue growth! Customer acquisition! Leads goals! Increase our traffic! The list goes on.
While the idea of “growth” — and all of the hacks, tips, and tricks that go along with the term — can often feel a bit buzzy and overwhelming, real growth actually is actually the result of well-established processes and an internal emphasis on experimentation and testing.
Brian Balfour, former VP of Product at HubSpot and a thought leader in the world of growth marketing, is an expert when it comes to building a process for experiments that enable growth overtime. While he emphasizes that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for growing your business, he does have some pro tips when it comes to actually building a process for growth experiments. And that’s what will ultimately move the needle for your company.
We’ll take you through the steps of a building a sustainable process for growth experiments based on Balfour’s tips. Once you establish an experimentation process that works for your team, that buzzy growth term might seem attainable after all.
And once you get there, our new 2017 Marketing Experiments Calendar can help you build a backlog of ideas, design and prioritize your experiments, and record your results all in one place.
How to Build a Process for Growth Experiments
To grow, you have find ways to experiment. The problem with that is finding time to do that in the right way, especially when you also have multiple other tasks and ideas. That’s why building a sustainable process for recording your ideas and implementing them as experiments is essential. By figuring out these steps, you’ll enable your team to effectively write down ideas, prioritize experiments, and put them into practice.
But where do you begin?
1) Start with the scientific method.
Ah, yes. We’re back to Week 1 of any science class you’ve ever taken. As it turns out, you really do use some of that elementary school information in real life.
When it comes to building a process for experimentation, it comes down to following the scientific method. Create a way to brainstorm ideas, construct hypotheses from them, implement them, and prioritize your ending analysis and conclusions.
When experimenting for the sake of growth, building this process for your team isn’t a one-and-done deal. Instead, according to Balfour, a good process has to be:
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“Scalable
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Predictable
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Repeatable”
In other words, it’s not enough to just say that the scientific method is your process. Instead, use the scientific method as template to structure your internal process.
2) Always have a goal in mind.
Once you have your process down, the next step is to set goals, which might sound simple in theory. But the goals of any given experiment can’t just be “growth” — because growth along isn’t measurable. Instead, every experiment you run should have an actionable and testable outcome, which means you have to start small.
Let’s break it down with an example:
- What’s the overall goal? Revenue growth.
- How are you going to drive more revenue? By acquiring more leads.
- How will you do that? Increase the conversion rate of my lowest-converting lead generation campaign.
- What is your campaign-specific goal? Increase conversions on one landing page by >5% and find statistically significant results.
- How will you implement an experiment to meet that goal? A/B test the title of the lead generation offer.
You can see from th example that while increasing your revenue is an admirable high-level goal, it’s not actually actionable unless you break it down into actionable experiments. And tying a metric to your experiment — in this case, increasing conversions by greater than 5% on one landing page — is what makes it actionable.
If you have trouble setting actionable goals for your experiments, start with that high-level goal and work your way down an incremental path, until you have something that you can tie to a metric.
3) Encourage and enable brainstorming and hypothesis.
Building a culture of experimentation within your team requires the encouragement and motivation to always be brainstorming. That’s why building a mechanism for tracking and recording those brainstorms is essential for any good growth experiment process.
Whether it’s an Excel sheet, Google Doc, Trello board, internal wiki page, or any other tool your team typically uses…
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