High Tempo Testing: Collaboration + Action = The Formula for Growth

At WE·DO, collaboration + action are the two founding principles behind everything “we do” for our clients. Our process of high-tempo testing for growth fits right in when helping your business achieve its goals. From conversion rate optimization to search engine optimization, we use this method to learn fast and adjust fast.

If you’re not familiar with high tempo testing, here’s what it means, in a nutshell.

High tempo testing is the process of trying several small hacks or tweaks in your marketing efforts and continuously measuring/repeating them to reach your goals. 

High tempo testing is, broadly speaking, any new initiatives, product feature releases, campaigns or A/B tests that you’re doing on a recurring basis. This means anything from font color to landing page layout to what hour to send an email to which new download to offer would count as a high tempo test.

When we run these tests, we push from every angle to achieve growth in a systematic, measurable way. Think: several small tweaks done many, many times to achieve favorable results. 

Here’s a good analogy…

Let’s say golf is your thing (I’m told there are people who enjoy this). You’re at the driving range and want to get as many holes in one as you can. So you decide to experiment—a lot. You try different clubs, different ways of holding them, different types of swings, different ways of posturing your body, etc. 

If you decide to hit 400 balls vs. 10 balls using all these different strategies, how much more likely do you think it would be to score that ace in the hole? 

High tempo testing is the exact same concept just applied to growth marketing. 

Here’s how we break it down.

COLLABORATION:

Analyze. First, together as a team, we analyze opportunities for growth stacked against your metric of success. Most companies have a “North Star metric,” which is simply what success means to them. For Airbnb, that’s total booked nights. For other companies this can mean total booked calls, a certain email click-through rate, etc. 

Ideate. Next, we open up the floor for everyone on our team to come up with ideas. Ideation takes on two main forms, either in the realm of: 

• Discovery: what can we discover running this test 
• Optimization: how can we improve with this test 

Collaborating across roles and departments ensures the best idea wins and there are as many of them as possible. 

ACTION:

Prioritize. We score and prioritize ideas based on the ICE method. Every idea is rated and scored by:

• Impact. What kind of impact will this idea have if it works?
• Confidence. How confident do we feel that this idea will work?
• Ease. Is this idea quick and easy to test, or will it take weeks to plan and figure out?

Test. Once we’ve singled out the clear winners, it’s time for the fun part: testing! We generally conduct high tempo testing on a sprint-by-sprint basis, two weeks or so long, with the goal of running 2-3 experiments per week. 

Report. Finally, the proof is in the pudding. What did we learn? What was gained? How effective was this test in pushing you to your ultimate goal or metric? Will we continue on? How will what we learned affect what we try next? These are all questions we ask as a team during our reporting phase. 
Wash, rinse, and repeat. High tempo testing never really ends, it’s just re-imagined, each time getting stronger and better than attempts before.

High tempo testing is a systematic way of creating predictable growth for your business. It takes the most creative and best ideas, plunges forward with them and measures them to continually tweak toward reaching your goals. 

If you’d like to discover how your business can take advantage of our high tempo testing model for growth, get in touch with us today. We’ll walk you through it.