Experimental Marketing Works

As marketers or strategists, we don't have perfect knowledge. To have perfect knowledge you would have to be a god-like marketer who is omnipresent in every situation now and in the future. If only!!! Herbert Simon talked about how we have a bounded rationality, which means that we are confined to very limited thought processes due to our imperfect knowledge about every situation every day. We only gain tiny amounts of intelligence the more we analyze a situation, some of which becomes distorted due to the nature of the retrospective analysis. Thinking we know it all is delusional and dangerous, not because that makes us arrogant but because we will make assumptions based on imperfect information which will lead to poor decisions that might cost a company time and valuable resources. Accepting that we have imperfect knowledge can be liberating as it paves the way towards a different ideology. Instead of wanting every business decision to follow a sequential process like an algorithm then it liberates us into making decisions where we accept the outcome is unknown, but could be positive nevertheless.

Wouldn't it be great to embark on an expensive marketing campaign knowing the results would have guaranteed success? How many times do you hear on Dragons Den the panel asking the entrepreneurs if they have any forward orders from prospective clients, which is probably the nearest thing to a sure thing an investor can hear? There are very few sure things in this complex ever changing business world. We cannot expect our teams of marketeers to come up with sure things. We must encourage experimentation, and not look for a ROI in every new campaign right from the get go.?This approach will stifle creativity and demoralize your team.?

Over the years I have concluded that whilst analysis is a very important aspect of the marketing process, experimental marketing is far more effective. For me, experimental marketing is about pursuing an idea with the same intent as you would with any new marketing idea, but you start the process of marketing much sooner than traditional approaches and don't become disappointed if you encounter early failures. Your understanding of a marketing idea will be greatly enhanced the moment you try to sell your product to your target market, as nothing can beat trying to sell something in terms of feedback and understanding of how good your ideas are. Once you are active in a market the potential customers will let you know very early on in the process whether you are going down the right strategic path or not. That said, you must keep trying to find a way into a new market once you have allocated resources to a campaign, not because I believe every idea eventually works, far from it, but because I believe there is always some gap or opportunity in every market no matter how saturated.

We recently carefully planned out a campaign to replace a brand of cleaning products we had lost. Several meetings took place and we collectively came up with some creative ideas and thoughts to develop a new brand with an alternative product. As the months went past we learned more and more about the market even though we had been a player in it for many years. We found it impossible to replace the brand we had lost, despite every effort to do so. We made some expensive mistakes based on some poorly thought-through assumptions about existing customers. However, we are now starting to discover gaps in this particular market with a completely different product. No amount of analysis would have led us to this point and once again active marketing is the key to discover new creative ideas. To make this approach work for you, you need to learn to listen and react to every comment your team make as the marketing process progresses, and encourage the pursuit of new unexpected ideas.?You will find a way to develop new marketing ideas, but not from comfort of your office.?