The best marketers apply the scientific method to prioritize & test different marketing strategies. Here's an in-depth (7000 words) guide with many real-life examples on how you can do the same thing.

Every week, there are many high-quality marketing guides published on the internet and in this subreddit. This is a good thing.

However, I see many beginner entrepreneurs blindly implement these "marketing tactics" and guides without a systematic or scientific approach.

Beginners who:

• Blindly change their website button to red because some article said so.

• Blindly try marketing with Snapchat because it’s the latest craze.

• Blindly start guest posting because every marketing blog says so.

Basically, beginners who are blindly implementing marketing tactics and hoping it’ll work.

[IMGUR Link: Blind marketing]

And that needs to stop. Stop relying on luck and praying something will work.

Instead, you need to have a marketing framework so you can predict which marketing tactics will work for your specific business and circumstances.

I’m not saying not to read marketing guides anymore. In fact, you should - it’s a great way to stay up-to-date on the latest marketing techniques. But the point is this:

You need to have a systematic and scientific approach for your own marketing strategy.

[IMGUR Link: Marketing scientists]

This isn't just me talking. There's a reason why many of the top companies (e.g. Hubspot, Uber, Dropbox, SumoMe, Facebook, AirBnb, etc...) all approach marketing with a scientific marketing framework.

The best thing? You don't need to have a science/engineering background, it's a relatively simple framework you can learn with enough practice.

So what is the scientific method?

It’s a way to solve a question or problem by making observations and doing experiments. The whole concept is to be able to predict and repeat your experiments.

By applying a scientific/systematic approach to marketing, you can predict which marketing tactics will be the most effective by running small tests to gather data.

With that information, you can make tweaks to scale and improve your marketing experiments.

Here’s a summary of how it works and how you can begin approaching marketing with a different mindset:

[IMGUR Link: Scientific Process]

Step 1: Start compiling all the great marketing guides you read into an “ideas backlog” spreadsheet (you can download it at the end)

[IMGUR Link: Ideas Backlog Spreadsheet]

Step 2: Create and define your goal (based on the AARRR funnel) by working backwards from your end vision. Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time related.

[IMGUR Link: SMART Goal]

Step 3: Prioritize your marketing tactics based on how it fits in with the goal, and score them based on the: probability of success, resources required, and impact.

[IMGUR Link: Priority Matrix]

Step 4: Validate the assumptions you used to prioritize the marketing tactics by running small 80/20 marketing experiments. Do this by breaking down your goal into week-to-week growth targets so you can measure your progress.

[IMGUR Link: Marketing Experiment]

Step 5: Create an experimental plan by documenting how you will be executing the marketing strategy.

[IMGUR Link: Weekly Growth]

Step 6: Execute your marketing plan and keep detailed notes as you progress through the experiment.

[IMGUR Link: Execution Strategy]

Step 7: Analyze your results by asking “why” the experiment was a success or failure. Do research to find out “why” so you can make tweaks. If the experiment was a failure and it’s too difficult to fix, kill the experiment and move on.

Step 8: If the experiment was a success, apply your lessons learned and scale your experiment in iterative steps. Leverage technology or your playbook to 10x your results. Continue to focus on the marketing channel until it’s no longer effective.

[IMGUR Link: iterative steps]

Step 9: Rinse and repeat!

And that's how you approach marketing with a scientific framework.

Stop copy/pasting marketing guides you’ve read about without any sort of framework (including this one!).

If you're interested in this topic and want a deeper understanding: I wrote a 7000 word guide that expands on this subject.

In it, I provide examples based on my own marketing experiments and also based on the professionals like Mint.com and Dropbox. I also include all the tools/spreadsheets so you can begin to do the same thing.

Remember, all the great marketing guides you read should be used as inspiration, and not as a copy/paste playbook for your business. Each business is different, so it’s up to you to take the learnings from those guides, and customize it to fit your own business by using a systematic/scientific approach.

Any questions, comments or constructive criticism?

Reply in this thread! Or send me an email at wilson[at]sumome.com.