A 9-Step Strategy To Conducting Business and Marketing Experiments

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Morning all

The time today 🙂

I was inspired to write this blog this morning because I’ve been up since 430am – and part of my time was spent doing a couple of things:

Table of Contents

What Led Me To Discussing Business And Marketing Experiments

First of all – it looks like my YouTube shorts are being received well >

Although the watch time isn’t fantastic – it looks like a lot of people click away after 10-15 seconds.

Nonetheless – step 1 is I’m getting more views on these shorts.

These have been a business and marketing experiment that I’ve been running. I began my YouTube journey at the start of the year and it’s now that I’m beginning to discover some growth.

In general, it’s been a steady climb as these other metrics will also demonstrate:

So this is really good to see that what has started out as a ‘let’s record a video (or 3 lol) every day has driven almost 40 hours of watch-time over the last 28 days.

What’s specifically led me to fiddle around watching tutorials on how to record system audio as well as my microphone this morning (forgetting completely about Screencastomatic lol)

Was this:

My top videos when it comes to YouTube search is from stuff I really enjoy watching as well as something I ran an experiment with.

If you go back to my reaction videos post you’ll see that one of the things I really enjoy doing is just that – watching reaction videos.

So I decided as an experiment to record one – which I totally messed up in terms of recording it.

It just went live recently anyway because why not – that’s the whole point of the discipline of business experimentation.

And as you can see from the metrics above – it’s now the video that’s driving the most search traffic.

This is WHY this morning – I spent 30-45 minutes figuring out how to record my system audio as well as my camera and my mic at the same time:

It took me a while to figure it out but now I think I’ve got the process down :p

And now I’m writing about it in this blog and NOW I’m recording me WRITING this blog because of what I’d consider being another effective sign of progress on YouTube:

Yes I know lol – my numbers are pitiful – but I’m making discoveries with all of the videos I make and here’s what they are so far:

YouTube Shorts seem to get more views than ANYTHING else I record (so far)

What an amazing business and marketing experiment that has turned out to be because I really didn’t know how they would go for me.

What’s exciting is that’s exactly the type of video that I enjoy making.

Often time – just like as has happened now – it’s 6.30 am and I’ve just recorded 3 YouTube shorts videos about:

Showing Versus Telling
The power of recording a live process
How to conduct business experiments

These are all < 60-second videos and alongside this, I’ve also got the video I’m recording whilst I write this which so far is clocking in at:

So let’s go through a framework for conducting business and marketing experiments:

Look for low-risk marketing and business experiments

So for me – producing YouTube content, writing blogs before 11 am, as well as writing Quora answers – are all low risk.

The cost of them NOT succeeding is ultimately time. And further to this – the upside of such risks is that they’ll always be available online to anyone who wants to learn more about myself.

Look for low-risk/high-return marketing and business experiments

Now in my case – there are definitely corners that I cut with my recording environment and the like that means the ‘time-cost’ of producing this content is arguably low impact – whilst the ACTUAL time spent is arguably high.

Specifically what I mean is that producing content in the volume that I do is quick. I’m probably clearing 80,000 words written since Jan 1st and by the time I’ve got to April 1st, I’ll be at 120,000 words plus.

Alongside having maybe 220+ videos recorded.

The return-on-investment on this content should be relatively high as it’ll continue to support me for the next several years.

So my risk is just time (none of this costs any money) and then returns – a following online, driving more traffic ultimately to my agency Pearl Lemon to generate more clients as well as generating a following that I can leverage in multiple ways is high.

Focus your experiments around activities that can carry multiple benefits

So I also am running ads to my YouTube channel via Facebook as a means to grow:

This is what’s driving the most traction to my channel at the moment – and it’s an activity I intend to keep running whilst the other mediums grow further still.

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Furthermore – the power of video and written content comes with the ability to repurpose things.

My blogs are being turned into the following:

Medium Content
LinkedIn Content
Amazon Books

And just now I’m putting in a process to have them turned into infographics.

My videos (specifically the short ones) will also now be used on Tik-Tok and Instagram once I get my act together and establish a process for this.

Focus It Around Something That You Enjoy So You Can Easily Add Volume To An Experiment

One of the biggest challenges in my view with failed experiments is that they’re not given enough time to mature and develop – and so people don’t really ‘fail’ – they actually give up.

The time needed is to run continual split tests whilst you try things – and then to also give each of those ‘things’ some opportunity to gain traction.

For me, one of the most exciting things I’ve seen literally this morning is that my very (ultimately) poor reaction video (in terms of the recording framework) still is being found via YouTube search.

This means I can start recording tons of reaction videos – because I bloody love watching other people record reaction videos anyway – so now I’ve got opportunities to record my own.

I’m confident this process will work.

Measure All Of Your Experiments

With recording YouTube content – you can get instant feedback to thankfully that’s pretty easy to gauge in terms of what’s going on.

I can simply log into the analytics dashboard and get a sense of what’s happening.

With regards to my blog – it’s a little more challenging.

In fact – let me have a look RIGHT NOW –

Unfortunately, it’s massively failing at the moment from a Google search console perspective – nothing is even showing up in search.

I’ve now shot off an email to my team:

To understand if we need to course-correct, adjust, or otherwise.

Pivot/Adapt/Adjust When What You’re Doing Isn’t Working

So once you’re able to analyze the data (as I have above) – it’s important you make changes with your approach to ensure you’re getting the best return for your time invested.

The definition of insanity is, of course, repeating the same activity and expecting to get the same result – which makes no sense at all.

Whilst my blog is seemingly ‘failing’ – there are other variables that RIGHT NOW still make the process of producing content meaningful:

Its reusability (i.e repurposing it/reusing it across multiple platforms)

I enjoy writing (as we established as being central to conducting business experiments)

And with all of this in mind consider the following with business and marketing experiments:

Know When To Allow A Process More Time

Running an SEO agency means that patience is central to the journey. It’s what I preach to my clients, it’s what we need to do internally.

I’m reminded by what Sujan Patel said:

(I couldn’t the right blog post lol but this is close enough:)

I’ve only been actively blogging on deepakshukla (daily at least) for 45 days.

Granted I’ve got several months of content behind that – but SEO on my blog is JUST starting now – so I’ve got to allow this process months before I measure its efficacy

Know When To Kill An Experiment That Failed

Well – this is what I realize from 2020.

I wrote over 300,000 words – with NONE of it optimized for SEO. As a consequence, it seems that Google is pretty much ignoring ALL of the content on my blog right now.

So what I’ve done as of really the last 30 days – is to start to do keyword research.

As you’ll see from the blog such as this:

I enjoyed writing them but they didn’t get ANY traction from Google search…so in terms of discoverability – it’s an abject failure.

That’s because I didn’t combine something I want to write about (like business and marketing experiments) with actual keyword research

And that’s the adjustment I’ve made as of the literally the last 30 days.

Looking at my blogs it seems like the first one that seems to display evidence of a focussed keyword is this blog on Jan 16th.

Observe The Natural Experiments Within Your Business

Alongside all of the experiments, you’re actively focussed upon.

It’s also worth paying notice to all of the experiments that are happening without you even realizing it.

This can be with a ‘new hire’, a ‘tweak to a campaign setting’, a new ‘training video’ or ‘new service offering’.

There’s (if you look carefully enough within your company) a continual range of experiments occurring that you can look at (with no real additional expense) and make judgments and observations about.

One such example within Pearl Lemon is that we’ve (in hindsight not surprisingly) discovered that students on placement programs are unreliable when it comes to long-term stability.

This means that in order to see more, well stability, within the business – we would benefit from focussing upon an older team.

Final Thoughts

So, all in all,

As you’d expect to see there are those experiments that work (YouTube as a medium) and then those that seem to fail (content writing all-around at the moment lol).

But this is all the more reason to keep running experiments to see what it can do for your business.

These are just SOME of the experiments that we’re running in a bid to see how we can scale Pearl Lemon and also scale my own brand growth 🙂