You Are Probably Wrong
The theme of this blog is “You Are Probably Wrong. Prove Otherwise”. My second choice was “Only The Paranoid Market Well”.
These are the premises behind TestDrivenMarketing.com- that reality is complex enough that we would do well to test our assumptions, and test them often. Some examples of tests would be win/loss analysis, measuring the value of marketing collateral or campaigns, or using response-testing for messages or website content.
For more about me, read the About section. It’s a deeper explanation of me the philosophy behind this blog.
Prove Otherwise
However, I believe that testing is a mindset, and can be applied qualitatively or quantitatively to a far broader set of the marketing journey, whether it be testing the message, testing market assumptions, or testing core concepts and beliefs at each stage of the marketing journey.
The hallmark of many great managers is their inclination to ask questions rather then tell people the answer.
You could think of them as not managing, but assumption-testing and analysis coaching. The question, in the end, is the most pervasive and valuable test. And learning to ask questions of your self and others in a productive, open-minded manner is the foundation of test-driven marketing. Indeed, you could think of a cross-functional team as largely beneficial as a structured testing-by-question environment.
In many ways, “test” simply means think harder, observe more closely, and find clever ways to find out about information sooner rather then later.
Marketing, ultimately, is about improved communication and shortening the learning curve for both our customer AND us.
And the best way to do that is to find out what works as specifically and and as fast as possible. As a parting thought, the upfront work in testing and planning leads us to this goal:
Strive to make planning hard and execution easy.
Where planning is collecting and processing inputs (win/loss, value metrics, constraints, project and launch plans), and execution is generating output (positioning, messaging, content, collateral, training).
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Thanks,
Nick Van Weerdenburg
