Rome wasn’t built in a day. Perhaps the most overused cliché in our industry.
This phrase is often used to emphasise that impossible goals cannot be expected to be met in a short period of time. Yet, by setting the goal of undertaking ongoing repeatable processes to make continuous improvements, incrementally building Rome seems more achievable.
In 2010 Dave Brailsford was given the General Manager position at cycling’s Team Sky. No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France before but Brailsford claimed this would change within five years. Team Sky managed a victory in three years with Sir Bradley Wiggins’ 2012 win and have since won in 2013, 2015 and 2016 with Chris Froome. Brailsford attributes the continued success to the “aggregation of the one percent margin for improvement in everything you do”. By making small enhancements to everything from team nutrition to the best travel pillow for sleeping in hotels, amazing results are achieved.
We took this approach when building our latest website. Even though we’re live, the website is not completed yet. And it never will be.
A big bang website refresh was needed, as our previous effort was looking dated.
Rather than get everything set in stone straight away we will evolve our website with data and experimentation. If you're reading this then you’re part of that process.
Currently, we have 18 different live iterations of our website across five experiments that will educate us on which colours work, which copy makes you want to discover more and which of our initial ideas have not had the pay-off we anticipated.
That final point is key. Opinion-based marketing with no evidence collection can lead to a poor user experience and unacceptable return on investment. Being able to identify which parts of a marketing channel are not performing allows a quick change of direction. Given our less than perfect economic climate, plugging gaps is an essential process in keeping the lights on.
Our process could be summarised in five steps:
- Definition of Business Goals
- Analysis of Data
- Hypothesis Creation
- Experimentation and Testing
- Learning and Improvement
This scientific approach to marketing is delivering real, actionable results for our clients and us. But, before you put on your lab coat we must warn that actually being able to understand how effective your marketing is can be quite addictive.
If you would like to know more about our approach to digital strategy or if you have feedback on our website please get in touch.
