When you think back to your high school science classes, what stands out? We’re going to go out on a limb and say it probably wasn’t the lectures or the tedious lab write-ups. Your favorite part was most likely experimenting — getting your hands on the chemicals and Bunsen burners that would make things explode.

As kids, science experiments were a hands-on way to teach us about how the world works. And although the days of baking soda volcanos and not-quite-safe chemical reactions are (mostly) behind us, you can still use experimentation to add some “boom” to your marketing strategy.

Here’s what you need to know about marketing experiments and a few that you can try on your own — no lab coat or goggles required!

Designing Your Marketing Experiment

Every good marketing experiment starts with a hypothesis — an “if … then” statement that serves as an educated guess of what you think will happen. “If we send out emails at noon on Monday rather than 8 a.m., then our click-through rate will increase by X%.”

Next, it’s time to do some research. What evidence can you find to support your hypothesis? Are other companies having more success sending emails out later in the day? Why do you think that would resonate better with your customers?

Once you have your hypothesis and some supporting evidence, you can conduct the experiment and record your results. Did the experiment fail? Then it’s back to the drawing board.

The great thing about experiments is that they can be repeated as many times as necessary. So keep tweaking and trying until you get the results you’re looking for!

Marketing Experiments You Can Try Today

You can try plenty of marketing experiments in very little time. But a word of caution: Don’t take on too many at once. If you start changing everything about your strategy at the same time, it’ll be much harder to figure out which variables had what impact.

That warning out of the way, here are some of our favorite DIY marketing experiments:

• A/B Testing: One of the absolute simplest marketing experiments you can try, A/B testing involves showing half of your audience one thing and half a slightly different thing and figuring out which one works better. This is a great way to test out subject lines, headlines, calls to action (CTAs), landing pages, social posts and more.
• Timing: Does the day and time you send an email or schedule a social media post make a difference in your engagement? Do more people click through if it’s sent on a Tuesday at 2 p.m. rather than a Friday morning?
• Social Platforms: Does your target audience engage more with your brand on Twitter or Instagram? Is there a place for your small business on LinkedIn or Pinterest? Experimenting with various social medial platforms will allow you to hit your audience where they live.
• Type of Content: Is your audience made up of readers or listeners? Does video work better than still photography or GIFs? Your message may be stellar, but if you’re not delivering it the way most of your audience prefers to receive it, you’ll fall flat every time.

Experimenting with your small business marketing can show you what’s working well and what could use some shoring up. Remember: Small improvements can add up to big results!

We have a hypothesis: If you choose Mischa Communications as your marketing partner, then you’ll enjoy small business success. Care to help us with the experiment?