Introducing Iterative Marketing, a methodology for continuous improvement. Born from frustration with “big campaign” thinking, Iterative Marketing is a compilation of industry best practices, packaged to work together. Learn about the six fundamental truths and six actionable components that make up the methodology.
Episode Show Notes
Podcast Introduction and the Definition of Iterative Marketing
(0:00 – 1:15) Introduction: Hosts Steve Robinson and Elizabeth Earin greet listeners as they kick off their inaugural Iterative Marketing podcast. They unveil the topic of today’s discussion: iterative marketing itself.
(1:15 – 4:57) The Origin of Iterative Marketing: Iterative marketing is not a concept that was explicitly invented or crafted; rather, it is an amalgamation of successful strategies from various industries and marketers, systematically employed to achieve positive results.
(4:57 – 6:10) Iterative Marketing Versus Modern Marketing: The key distinction is letting go of large-scale campaigns and opting for a smaller-scale approach, while meticulously analyzing all relevant data. This change in perspective helps you more easily identify suitable strategies to address each challenge effectively.
(6:10 – 7:12) Fundamental Truths and Actionable Components of Iterative Marketing: The iterative marketing framework is comprised of six fundamental truths and six actionable components. The objective of the six fundamental truths is to create a shared understanding of the marketing strategy, ensuring everyone has a similar mindset when approaching tasks. Meanwhile, the six actionable components represent the steps taken to implement iterative marketing, leading to ongoing enhancements in marketing processes.
The Six Fundamental Truths
(7:12 – 8:01) The First Fundamental Truth: A Persona-First Mindset: The initial fundamental truth centers on adopting a persona-driven approach, grounded in the principle of customer-focused marketing. Marketing efforts must be tailored to suit the needs of your target audience or persona, rather than prioritizing the brand’s needs.
(8:01 – 9:47) The Second Fundamental Truth: Programs over Campaigns: The second tenet of iterative marketing underscores the value of prioritizing programs over campaigns. This approach aims to shift away from the conventional campaign-centric perspective. Programs are distinguished by their ongoing, indefinite, and repeatable nature, whereas traditional marketing campaigns are often designed around media constraints, resulting in time-limited initiatives.
(9:47 – 10:44) The Third Fundamental Truth: Measurement and Feedback: The third essential principle highlights the importance of measurement and feedback. By beginning your efforts on a smaller scale and progressively measuring and refining them, you can gain clearer insights into subsequent steps. Without feedback or historical performance data, it becomes challenging to identify the successful and unsuccessful aspects of your approach.
(10:44 – 12:39) The Fourth Fundamental Truth: Minimum Viable Marketing Programs (MVMP): The Minimum Viable Marketing Program (MVMP) is often considered the most challenging aspect of marketing. The core idea behind MVMP is to start with a modest, strategically allocated marketing budget, while deliberately choosing channels that facilitate testing and insight gathering. This approach helps prevent substantial investments in potentially ineffective strategies and allows marketers to concentrate on executing successful ideas that foster growth and achievement over time.
(12:39 – 14:34) The Fifth Fundamental Truth: Data-Driven Decisions: The fifth fundamental truth focuses on data-driven decision-making. This principle emphasizes the notion that optimal decisions are grounded in data rather than being influenced by emotions. Do not allow emotional fallacies such as sunk costs to keep you from eliminating unsuccessful elements of your program. Rely on the data to reveal whether your ideas are effective or not, and make decisions based on that data.
(14:35 – 17:11) The Sixth Fundamental Truth: Create Insight: The final principle of iterative marketing emphasizes the importance of gaining insights. Although experimentation can lead to better program results, it is even more valuable when it helps us to develop a more profound understanding of our target audience that can be used across other channels and programs. For example, a test on button color may reveal the color preference of your audience at a specific time, but it does not provide you with any insights that can be applied to other marketing channels.
Charity Outreach
(17:11 – 18:39) Charity Break: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
The Six Actionable Components
(18:39 – 20:11) Six Actionable Components: The conversation continues with the six steps to follow when implementing iterative marketing. These actionable components necessitate some time investment but promise long-term advantages. They can be executed individually and tailored to your organization’s needs, eventually culminating in a comprehensive program.
(20:11 – 22:15) The First Actionable Component: Discovering Your Brand: This aspect focuses on brand discovery. Unravel your audience’s perception of your brand and establish a consistent brand identity by sharing it throughout the entire organization. Creating a thoroughly documented brand serves as the foundational step in this process.
(22:15 – 23:21) The Second Actionable Component: Persona Discovery: The next actionable step is to create a persona which is a profile of a fictional individual based on your ideal audience. The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, enabling you to create content that connects with them on a more empathetic level. Creating effective buyer personas is a simple way to align and provide direction for your marketing team.
(23:21 – 24:55) The Third Actionable Component: Journey Mapping: In this third step, you need to identify the specific actions that your audience takes throughout the buying cycle, and document how their needs and behavior change along the way. This process can help you recognize opportunities that can be utilized across your entire organization.
(24:55 – 26:30) The Fourth Actionable Component: Channel and Content Alignment: The next step involves aligning your personas, journey maps, and brand discovery with your channels and content. By doing so, you may discover certain elements of your plan that need to be changed. Nevertheless, aligning these components enables you to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time. The key to success in this step is to tackle it in smaller, manageable portions to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
(26:30 – 28:20) The Fifth Actionable Component: Experimentation and Optimization: The fifth step revolves around designing impactful experiments and utilizing the findings to achieve successful iterations. Experiments should yield insightful results that are both statistically significant and relevant to your marketing objectives.
(28:20 – 32:30) The Sixth Actionable Component: Reporting and Feedback: This stage plays a crucial role in demonstrating the value of marketing efforts. The gathered data offers concrete insights that can assist in steering the organization. Reporting and feedback supply the necessary constraints to guide creative teams, ensuring they generate meaningful and effective outcomes.
(32:30 – 34:51) Conclusion: Join us on our journey and subscribe to the podcast to watch more. See you next time!
Join Us Next Time
Iterative Marketing is a part of the Brilliant Metrics organization. If you would like more information on the marketing services provided by the expert team at Brilliant Metrics, reach out today for a free discovery call.
The Iterative Marketing Podcast, a production of Brilliant Metrics, ran from February 2016 to September 2017. Music by SeaStock Audio.
Learn more about Iterative Marketing and listen to other episodes on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.