Let’s start with a story… Our gang started exploring the world of advertising to promote our Soft Skills Pills platform. We realize that this brings us a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty because none of us has the expertise in product advertising.

To deal with the new item in our plan successfully – we need to experiment!

So, we got together in a meeting, we listed all the ways and tools we could think of to spread the word of our platform. Then we chose 3 of them: Facebook ads, Google ads and promo campaigns. We decided that we will only experiment with these 3 and measure what they’ll bring us until August 30th.

Simplicity:

We’ve chosen only 3 tools to experiment with that are well-known as advertising tools. Choose tools that are easy and simple to test, or that you can easily name so that you can implement them easily.

⚠️ Possible pitfall:

If you decide to integrate more tools on the fly – these would be “micro-events” and they could impact the experiment.
So, if you introduce such in the middle of your experiment – please do it consciously. The best way would be to pick some now and stick to them during the chosen period.

Time-bound:

We chose a specific date by which to conduct this experiment.

⚠️ Possible pitfall:

Be careful not to choose a timeframe that is too short – that will not be enough for you to collect data.
Be careful not to choose a timeframe that is too long – or in other words to be in a never-ending experimental phase.

Clarity:

In order for the experiment to work – we all need to have a clear understanding of what’s expected from us at any given time. We should be aligned.

Some examples:

• We need to know for what period we run an ad;
• How many active ads we should have;
• How many promotional campaigns we should have within a month;
• What budget do we allocate for each of the tools;
• Which products we’ll promote in the ads;
• Who will drive creating and running the ads.

It’s important for all of you to have the same answers.

⚠️ Possible pitfall:

If more questions appear during the experiment – take time to clarify them so you’re all on the same page. Otherwise, it will not work.

Accountability:

Everyone’s role in the experiment should be clear. In our case – we all know who is responsible for the visuals, who writes the texts for the ads, etc. We’re holding each other accountable.

⚠️ Possible pitfall:

If some of you are not doing your role in this experiment – it’s likely to fail. Keep in mind that someone not doing what’s expected of them is more often than not due to a lack of understanding/clarity. So, in those cases – ask the person directly and refer to what you’ve agreed.

Measurable:

In our case, we know what our pain point is – a low amount of sales (by our standards :D). So, we measure the pain point – how many sales will we generate until August 30. This is how we’ll see if these 3 tools are actually solving the pain point.

⚠️ Possible pitfall:

Don’t let gut feeling be your only way of measuring progress. Add a bit of structure to it.

To summarize:

Behind the success of the experiment and to be objective whether your idea works or not, the experiment must be: simple, limited in time, clear for all team members to hold each other accountable, and needs a structure to measure the progress of the experiment.