Marketing 0

Perform Rapid Experimentation
Rapid experimentation is one of the most important elements of
agile marketing. Traditionally, concept testing relies on pre-launch
market research. The pre-launch study focuses on discovering

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customer insights, which become the basis for new product
development or campaign ideas. The ideas are then presented to a
group of respondents during concept tests. Since the concepts are
still hypothetical, and often without working prototypes, the
respondents have difficulty imagining the final products. Hence, the
concept test could be biased. Moreover, there is usually a delay
before the results come in—making it too late to make alterations.
In agile marketing, however, actual products are produced in small
batches and sold to real customers based on the lean startup
playbook. The early product version with just enough features for
launch is called the minimum viable product (MVP). It is important
to note the definition of product is broad, which may include an
actual product, a new UI/UX, or a campaign idea. It is essential to
launch the MVP as quickly as possible so that companies can get first
learning for future enhancement and augmentation of the product.
Rapid experimentation enables businesses to learn in a controlled
environment. The experiments are isolated to specific geographical
locations so that companies can safely contain failures and manage
risks. Several iterations can be made to refine the product
continuously over time. Moreover, real-time analytics allows
companies to measure market acceptance instantly before the launch
of the next version or the bigger rollout.
In conducting experiments, it is not always about persevering with
the original ideas and making continuous, small improvements. In
some cases, market acceptance is so poor for several iterations that
the agile team must decide to change the project course radically.
Newfound insights coming from the analytics could also change the
direction of the project. In agile, this is known as pivoting. Pivoting is
challenging because the team must go back to the drawing board and
rethink the problems or opportunities. The ability to quickly pivot
when things do not go their way is often considered the biggest
difference between traditional and agile organizations.