Hi friend! 👋
We just switched the clocks one hour back, and with that, Finland will descend into eternal darkness.
Maybe not quite eternal — but it's gonna be a while until we see the sunlight (at the end of the tunnel?) again. 🤩
How do we segue from such a bleak opening to, well anything else?
No idea.
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What's happening at Advance B2B? 🎥 🎙 📝
Well, at least we have been publishing some new articles:
On top of this, there is also a new 'The Growth Hub Podcast' episode up.
Yeap, we're busy bees: publishing content left and right. 🐝
And if that wouldn't be enough, we also published new case studies with some of our amazing customers. You could be next, you know. Just let us know and we'll make it happen. ❤️
And last, but definitely not least, we still have the customer research survey open, if you have a moment (max 10 minutes) to spare. Fill this out and we will love you forever. No biggie!
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In this letter, we will share articles we recently read about experiments because, after all, our formula for growth marketing is:
Brand x Experimentation and iteration = Growth 👇
HubSpot's growth process and how we run experiments
Our main takeaways from David's article on how experiments were run at Hubspot.👌
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How the best tech companies run growth experiments
This article by Kieran Flanagan at Open View Partners has been around for a while, but it never gets old.
Our main takeaway is one that we see in our work often. And we always have to remind ourselves not to fall into the same trap:
Predictions does not equal hypothesis
When it comes to experiments, a hypothesis is an essential part of an experiment documentation.
It's a statement about something we think is true about our users, website visitors, or ideal customers. But easily, we are tempted to formulate a prediction based on a metric we think will improve.
For example: Adding an option to sign up without a credit card will increase our visit to trial conversion rate by 50%.
See what we did there? The metric we want to improve is the visit to trial conversion rate. Basically, we want to get more trials into the system.
But what's wrong? Exactly, the outcome is not the goal of the experiment. And by focusing on the metric you want to improve, you forget to focus on what matters most: your customers.
After all, the customer is why you want to learn. We want to learn about customer behavior, and that's why we run experiments.
So, instead: I believe that adding the option to sign up for a trial without a credit card will help potential web visitors to sign up for the trial without hassle (who's got their credit card handy all the time?)
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Customer Spotlight of the month: Sympa ❤️
Sympa is a core HR solution that helps smoothen the way to a better world of work.
We started working together with Sympa in January 2021. While we initially had quite a heavy focus on content production, we also supported local markets in The Netherlands and Sweden.
What went well?
We really feel like we are part of our customer's team.
There's nothing worse than working with an external partner who you know will bill you for every single thing you ask.
Of course, we have to remain profitable, but small things like being in our customer's Teams make all the difference. This way, we can quickly answer and collaborate with the wider marketing team.
One thing that went extremely well is that we have access to Sympa's analytics, and we could take the time to really dig into the growth bottlenecks.
Now, we can clearly see what needs to be done in order to take Sympa's marketing forward and low-key conquer the world.
What didn't go so well?
We can't lie here; it has been a bumpy road.
Our customer once asked us if we allocated a certain 'Admin credit amount' because they are so difficult. No, we didn't (we always have credits reserved to report and plan what we are doing in order to get the best results for our customers).
But the start was a bit bumpy. And for a long time, our cooperation lacked a strategic focus.
We are a strategic growth marketing agency, and being able to bring this strategic help to our customers is so important for us. Every time we focus on only tactics, our hearts break a little. You can call it professional pride. 😢
Of course, we love putting a smile on our customers face by showing tangible results such as conversions, and pipeline, and revenue even more.
But the strategy is the foundation. A lot of roads lead to Rome, but surely you're going to check the map before you hit the road.
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What's next?
Currently, we are aligning processes between sales and marketing, which is always an incredibly interesting part of our job.
We get to see so many different customers and their ways of working and can combine different learnings to help them get better. And we are also gonna test out new ways of advertising. Exciting times ahead 🎉.
Hope your November has been as sparkly as ours! ✨