Traditionally, most marketing messages are not tested before they go out into the world.

A certain amount of insights might be used to craft them. However, rarely are the messages tested on scale before they are used in campaigns with the hope of hitting the mark.

I have touched on the process we have been through ourselves of late to explore our own market, audience, and proposition.

The research we have been doing is actually so compelling that I thought I needed to highlight
again the sheer importance of validating messaging before use.

The results are a clear indication of changing demands.

In fact, we are about to double down on offering purely research services based on those findings.

In early 2022, we were evaluating what kind of services we wanted to offer in this modern age.

This involved audience research, competitor research, and reassessing the services we enjoyed offering compared of course with ones which stacked up from a business model perspective.

This led us to narrow and focus our services after running two critical pieces of audience research.

The first one, concentrating on ‘digital growth’, explored the challenges facing those responsible for growing digital revenue. The second was an analysis of the needs of those seeking research support

Once the research was complete, the next natural stage was to develop our propositional messaging.

Having developed 4 potential messages based on our findings, we went out and tested them to get some deeper insights into which our audience prefer and, more importantly, why.

We had a clear winner with over 50% of people choosing one specific
message.

What feels great now is that we can wrap all of our ongoing messaging and content around this proposition with the confidence that we already know that it resonates well with our target audience.

So, how can people be 100% confident in their messaging?

Research is crucial. Knowing always beats simply hoping that we have selected a proposition that will appeal to the audience.

This kind of trial and error is a costly, unnecessary route to take, particularly these days.

Consider that validating one can be done in a single week, receiving a large sample of results that show which message to go for and why.

We will always test propositions before using them. It is something of a necessity in my view, and we will continue to advocate it to all our clients.

Kind regards from Runway,

Lee