EXPERIENCE
BUILDING A CULTURE OF EXPERIMENTATION THERE’S REAL POWER IN DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING
WRIT TEN BY: ARI SHEINKIN,
VICE PRESIDENT, EXPERIENCE ENGINE, IBM
I work for IBM, so it won’t surprise you that I believe in data-driven marketing. Having helped dozens of organizations use data to transform for growth, I’ve come to recognize that the most successful companies do something beyond their data-lake, their martech or their AI/ML; they build a culture of experimentation. In the simplest terms that means they experiment – a lot. At a deeper level, they use tools like a/b and multivariate testing to reshape their culture to be more user-centric, more boldly creative, less afraid of failure, more agile and more fun. If you haven’t experienced it yet, here are four reasons why experimentation matters to your business.
EXPERIMENTATION GIVES YOU THE BEST USER DATA IN THE WORLD In a digital world, the most valuable data for decision making doesn’t sit in a database, you can’t query it or ask a data scientist. In a digital world, you create your own insight by putting your experience into the market as a structured experiment. This starts by taking your most imaginative idea (maybe the one you were afraid to pitch) and surrounding it with testable hypotheses. Better than focus groups or research, every user click is unfiltered feedback on your message, your design, your product, your experience. It’s the best data in the world, it’s direct
6
from your user, and it’s free.