About
Welcome to Test-Driven Marketing!
The goal of this blog is to be an expert resource for marketing to complex markets- enterprise B2B software and the like.
And the bottom line of complex markets? We don’t understand them very well- hence the term complex. In fact, in some cases we barely understand them at all- the complexity is well beyond our ability to model and predict social behaviour. You can see this reflected in venture capital and movie producing strategies- success is looked for at the portfolio level and each company or movie can be considered a test.
Of course, within our company we don’t want to wait till we go out of business (or stagnant in our growth) before we take our learnings from the market. So we lest shorter-term things that allow us to direct our overall company direction- things like search engine optimization, marketing campaign response, social media reach, and so on.
There are two solutions to complexity- first, and least likely, improve our models and thinking to be aware of what drives the complex behaviour, and maybe improve our prediction. Second, test everything we do to get tangible feedback we can take action against.
The first part- models, thinking and trying to predict- is largely there to convince us that we need to do the second part, and provides us with the qualitative insights needed to drive our test-driven strategy.
This is the catch-22: we need a real strategy about our markets in order to effectively test, but with out the testing, we lack the data to effectively form a strategy.
The answer is that we refine and improve our strategy, which refines and improves our testing, which refines and improves our strategy, which refines and improves our strategy, and so on.
One thing testing teaches us is that part of the battles against complexity is avoiding over generalization. This is challenging, because generalizations are how we simply and manage the world around us. A good generalization takes an overwhelming amount of information and compresses that information into a single concept that we use to inform our actions.
“For instance, don’t walk in the jungle (or the city) alone at night.”
Most of the time we make decisions from that generalization, and don’t give any thought to the underlying data that originally informed it. In fact, in many cases we never even considered the underlying data- the generalization was socially transmitted to us whole.
So a large part of this site is fighting over-generalization. Rather then repeat pithy slogans this site will focus on the nuances of “it depends” and “maybe”- nuances that don’t usually find their way into books and articles because they doesn’t generalize easily or fit the prevailing generalizations.
And to sum the above, consider the theme of this blog- “You Are Probably Wrong. Prove Otherwise”.
How do we “Prove Otherwise”? By adopting a testing mindset to most non-trivial decisions and activities. Form a hypothesis, competing hypothesizes, and find or invent tests to prove or disprove them.
Me? My name is Nick Van Weerdenburg, and I’ve been in the B2B software business for over 15 year across most aspects of it- development, sales consulting, professional services, product management and product marketing. Much of this has been deeply engaged with customers and seeing the fear and joy come and go from their eyes as different messages have come their way.
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