Low-Fidelity Prototyping Tools for Marketers

Part of the lean start-up methodology is to create low-fidelity prototypes that can be quickly designed to start testing market assumptions.

Remember the whole point of lean thinking is to eliminate waste - anything that prevents a team from starting to learn based on real consumer behaviour is considered a waste.

As I continue to think how this can be applied to marketing I quickly realized that in order for this approach to work it requires ways for marketers to create their own version of “Minimum Viable Products”.

Minimum Viable Campaigns.

How could this be done? Here’s the start of my list which I will continue to add to:

1. Direct Mail Campaigns

Use Multi-Variable or A/B Testing on an E-Mail Newsletter to a segment of your consumer database.

Test offer copy and call-to-actions. Use landing pages to test different creative concepts.

Create landing pages with: KickoffLabs

2. Digital Campaigns

Use a 1-page website and e-mail sign-up to track interest of the core idea. Run AdWord tests to drive traffic.

Create low-fidelity sites with: Unbounce

3. Contests

Test contest ideas on your brand’s Facebook Page. Offer a scaled down version of prizing and/or offer.

Easily create FB contest/sweeps modules using: NorthSocial

The key point here is not necessarily to test creative or execution but instead the core hypothesis of your campaign. For example, if you’re creating a campaign that involves consumers purchasing special offers it would make sense to first determine if people value the types of offers you plan on offering. If they don’t why build an entire campaign around it?

Or if you’re a non-profit planning a campaign with a donation ask first determine what’s the strongest message to do exactly that.

There are some obvious gaps here which will require more thinking - how does this work for media campaigns, in-store POS or print? There has to be solutions for these types of ideas as well…