What is a Minimally Viable Campaign (MVC)?

Marketing is about creating demand. Good marketing creates demand by addressing t he needs of the people you want to reach. On a tight budget? Need results fast? In 2020, the most important idea for you to master is the Minimally Viable Campaign (MVC).

WHAT IS AN MVC? The MVC philosophy is all about getting the most value out of the least amount of time, talent, and resources. This approach emphasizes experimentation, the importance of user feedback, and an iterative design process. It borrows from the popular Minimally Viable Product (MVP) model and Eric Ries “Lean Startup”.

THREE SIMPLE STEPS TO RUN AN MVC While there’s no single method for successfully running an MVC, you can create an MVC initiative at your organization by following these three steps we affectionately call:

• Interviewing friends

• Getting it out there

• Testing before investing

INTERVIEW YOUR FRIENDS An MVC is all about learning fast. And talking to people you already have a relationship with—current stakeholders, partners, customers, even your friends—can jump start the ideas that will fuel your campaign thinking. You don’t need a multi-million dollar research budget to understand the market and your customers. Ask the people who know your business why they love what you offer instead of the competition. (Success is discovering at least one thing you didn’t know.)

GET IT OUT THERE Your interviews now serve as your research. Leverage what you’ve learned to create content—see our blog on catalogs and lookbooks. But do it quickly. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Remember: You want to create something that’s simply good enough to be viable. The urgency of this step is meant to push you and your team to get your creative out into the wild. Social ads are a really effective way of testing new messages in the market—and getting results, fast.

TEST BEFORE YOU INVEST The final step in the minimally viable campaign process isn’t really final. It’s meant to be a flywheel where the value of testing feeds back into another visit to your friends and the minimally viable effort it takes to get the next creative to market.

Fortunately, the engine for generating testable marketing ideas start with our first MVC step: talking to people who have experience with what you (or your competition) is offering.

Advanced tip: To get even more value out of MVC efforts, you’ll want clarity on the current profitability of the channels you’re using. If you’re just starting out, don’t worry. You’ll want to baseline your estimates and projections by researching the marketing channels relevant to your business.

The key thing to remember in the MVC process is understanding when you’ve gathered enough information by testing your creative in the market—on Facebook or with Google Ads—to understand its effectiveness.

The goal here is to quickly get an understanding of your campaign inmarket—and then quickly evolve your content to better meet the needs of your prospects.

WHY MINIMALLY VIABLE CAMPAIGNS? Multichannel, multisegment marketing campaigns offer tremendous value when backed by smart strategy and steady management. But many small-to-midsize businesses and their marketers—maybe someone like you—need to prove their messaging in the market before they’re ready to commit serious marketing dollars.

The bottom line is—even if you loathe everything about marketing—you need to get the word out. You need to connect with your prospects. You’ll need to give them a reason to believe in what you’re offering. And you may need to figure out what those reasons are fast.

Let’s be real. Everyone is looking for smarter, more effective and efficient ways to market. In 2020, the MVC will not only be the most important marketing idea, it might just be the smartest one, too.

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