Field guide
Plan a 30-day channel experiment
Choose one buyer, one path, a spend ceiling and a stopping rule.
The purpose of a 30-day test is a decision, not a promise of growth. Define what would count as a useful signal before work begins, then record actual effort and outcomes.
Decision brief
A four-week decision, not a four-week campaign promise
An experiment needs one audience, one action and one owner. Write the current baseline and what would make the next month informative before buying a tool or adding channels. A small team usually learns more from one well-observed path than several half-run campaigns.
Record effort and cost beside outcomes. A result of zero qualified inquiries can be useful if the team completed the planned work and learned whether the audience, message or contact route failed. Avoid changing both the audience and offer halfway through the test.
What to do first
- Write the buyer, hypothesis, current baseline and one primary measure.
- Choose four weekly actions that fit the team's capacity and set a spend ceiling.
- At day 30, continue, revise or stop based on evidence.
Run a small comparison
- Week 1: document buyer, offer, baseline, exclusions, owner and budget ceiling.
- Weeks 2–3: run the same core action repeatedly and log qualified responses.
- Week 4: compare results with the starting hypothesis and decide to continue, revise or stop.
Questions to resolve
- What signal would justify one more month?
- What negative signal means stop immediately?
- Which inputs must stay stable to interpret the result?
How to read the result: The deliverable is a decision with evidence. Keep the notes even when the experiment does not justify more spend.
What this does not justify
- Change the goal whenever a metric looks weak.
- Run multiple new channels and attribute the outcome to one.
MeasureThe one outcome chosen in advance, plus effort and costs
Stop or revise whenStop when permission, ownership or buyer signal fails; revise if the hypothesis is untested.