Actions Over Assumptions: Testing New Marketing Strategies
Marketing at Endertech has been a pretty cool experience for me. A lot of ideas I had in mind for Endertech when I first started in March are still going on. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to craft new ideas, which gives me a chance to challenge my “assumptions.” The process usually goes something like this (bear with me it gets SUPER complicated…)
Email to Gabe (CEO of Endertech)
“Hey Gabe, just wanted to run an idea pass you that I been thinking about. I think we should do LinkedIn ads because it is similar to Facebook and I feel like the target market spends more time on LinkedIn than on Facebook.”
Gabe’s email response:
“Okay, launch it.”
The end. Look for part two of this article, coming probably in 3 months. Thank you.
Just kidding. Okay of course I am paraphrasing and skipping a lot of the back and forth notes, but it is as simple as pitching an idea that I think is good. Let’s start with the idea though. It has to be good. I mean I don’t think Gabe would respond the same way if I had said something like, “Hey Gabe, I think we should place Endertech logos on the local ice cream truck because I think kids will wonder what Endertech is and they will be so excited to tell their parents about it. Yup…brand awareness.”
The idea is important and the first step, but the actual execution of it has to be the next step. We can formulate opinions about different marketing ideas all day and assume different things to why they probably will work or probably won’t work. The problem is, if you don’t try you won’t ever know!
Test Your Assumptions
It is easy to assume in marketing. We can come up with different arguments based on target market, pricing of ads vs the return on investment, different metrics, etc. Yes you need to think about many things before even coming up with an idea, but ideas are worthless without execution. Once you come up with a good or what you think is a smart idea, its time to put it to the test.
Learn what you have to do to run that Facebook ad then run it. Answer questions on Reddit to grow your brand awareness, if you think people you are trying to reach are on there. By the way, we kind of failed at this. The marketing team came up with idea to have a separate chat room (on HipChat which is the chat system we use at Endertech) solely for Reddit questions. I would dig through Reddit every morning and find a question to share with the team. Then I would take their response and answer the question on Reddit. We wanted to grow our Reddit account. I think we were 0 for 3 at the attempts.
Hey, we tried though! We understood that people had other stuff to do, so we decided to try to answer simpler Reddit questions ourselves instead of posting them to the chat room. I didn’t come up with the idea, but I honestly thought it was worth a try. As of now, we are testing LinkedIn as well as its ad platform.
Get Others’ Input to Optimize
I always seek the thoughts of others in the marketing team before I fully pitch an idea. Rob (CTO of Endertech) just knows everything tech related it seems like. When I realized he had an interest in marketing, I bombarded him with questions and my thoughts on where I see opportunity for Endertech. The “abbreviation master” (what I call him) helped me understand parts of a marketing idea that I quite didn’t think about.
For instance, he really taught me a lot about Google Adwords, and showed me a cool way to add HTML ads that are simply small animation ads. We both didn’t know how they would do, but he went on and tried it. So far I am not sure the results, but that is not the point. Seeking input from others might make your initial marketing idea better or it can help you optimize a marketing initiative that is active.
Keep Up to Date
I love that marketing channels are updating so quickly in this tech age. This gives you an opportunity to take advantage of places a lot of companies are not looking at for marketing. What is interesting is not only the fact that the marketing platforms update, but the fact that the market’s attention shifts.
People might be consuming your content in one platform that you love, but if some new interesting platform comes out that takes in your audience, you should be able to adapt to the new platform instead of hoping for the best in places you are already marketing in. Just my thoughts. Keep up to date with the marketing world if you are marketing!