Overwhelmed by too many marketing channels, tactics, and experiments to run? Do this instead.

So you’re staring down a list of experiments to run and you have no idea which ones to prioritize.

There’s a million channels, tactics, and things to try, but nothing really sticks out at you as the thing you need to do first.

In order to know what to do next, we first have to ask ourselves some hard questions (but stick with me — you’ll dramatically reduce any wasted energy, time, and money simply by starting here).

Asking the right questions

When thinking about what experiments and tactics to try, start with a few strategic questions instead of banging your head against the wall:

1. What are you trying to achieve? e.g. growth, stability, peace of mind

2. Where’s the greatest area of opportunity to achieve what you want? e.g. acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, etc.

3. Can you prove that area of opportunity is the best one? e.g. voice of customer research, measuring the funnel, low activation rates or website conversion rates, high churn, etc.

4. What would have to be true in order to see improvement in that area of opportunity?

5. What’s currently blocking you or the team from achieving that improvement?

Alright — so we answered some tough questions, but hopefully you’re more focused by answering them. Based on the desired area of opportunity, ask more targeted questions to further decrease overwhelm.

If we’re struggling with acquisition, then ask questions like this:

• Who are you trying to attract?

• Why are they hiring the product? What’s triggering them to use it?

• Based on the two above, where do those folks hang out? Where can they be reached?

• Based on where they hang out, what’s going to come more naturally to you to leverage?

• What’s the KPI that needs to be improved in order to consider it a win? e.g. more traffic, more trials, more leads, etc.

• Finally, what’s the LTV of the product and which channels give you best payoff either long-term or short-term or both?

Your answers for prioritization lie somewhere in the mix of those things. It also means you can probably drop a lot of what’s on your list (and increase focus, etc.).

If we’re struggling with activation, then we’ll ask ourselves slightly different questions:

• Who are we trying to improve activation for?

• Why are they hiring the product? What’s triggering them to use it?

• What’s the key moment where they realize value from the product? When does the “Aha!” moment happen?

• How do we know when the user has experienced value?

• How can we bring the user to that moment as fast as possible?

• What resources, tools, or information would they need in order to reach that moment?

• What prompts would they need to see in the product from the moment they sign-up or book a demo to realize that aha moment?

• How are we making it as simple, clear, and easy as possible for users to enter in their payment information?

And so on. As you can imagine, the questions change based on what we’re looking at and our greatest areas of opportunity. You can apply this line of thinking to virtually any growth challenge.

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