An Entrepreneurial Horror Story & the Importance of MVPs
I thought Ben (my business partner) was joking when he said he had accidentally deleted 100 hours of workout footage we had filmed in the hotel rooms of Hotel Blackhawk, but his frightening combination of laughing and crying ensured me he was telling the truth.
This wasn’t any regular footage either. Every week night, we brought an entire film studio with us into a hotel room. from 4pm to 11:00pm, we would set up, film ourselves doing 4 hours of bodyweight workouts, and tear it all down again.
So, over the next month, we painstakingly filmed it all agin.
We were creating a virtual hotel fitness system called GuestFit. The idea was to allow hotels to offer their guests a free “workout of the day” if they scanned a QR code. (Watch our promo commercial here)
Hotels had to offer “a 24/7 fitness facility” and most of their gyms were closed due to the pandemic. This way, people could workout from the comfort of their rooms without trying to find a video somewhere on the internet.
Not only did we decide to film all the workouts ourselves, but we did a lot… like a TON… before we finally launched it inside of Hotel Blackhawk in Davenport, IA.
And the results were… drum roll please… nada.
A few people used it here and there, but not nearly what we expected.
There were a few things we could blame it on:
- It was launched in the midst of the pandemic and not many people were traveling
- We had no control over the QR codes being placed in the rooms by housekeeping
But, ultimately, the blame is completely on us. We should have tested our theory.
If we would have have put a small fraction of our energy into a well-planned test, we may have figured out a way to make it work.
How does this apply to marketing?
Marketing is fancy 9 letter word for test
A strategy can look perfect on paper, but the market will tell you what it wants.
To figure that out, you must put iterations out there and see what people are drawn towards most.
If we would have found a way to test our hotel fitness THEORY before we made it a full-fledged system, we would have been able to pivot and save ourselves countless hours and mental energy.
Why should I test?
You have finite resources. Every business does.
You don’t want to waste time, and you don’t want to waste money.
As our story alluded to, wasting time and money is EASY when you refuse to test a hypothesis.
Considering the staggering failure rates of businesses, going after something completely blind is a good way to dig your own grave.
How to test 101
The scientific method is a beautiful creation, and is often overlooked outside of STEM.
However, I find comfort in a scientific approach. In business, I believe math and science is one of our greatest tools to ensure success.
The Scientific method
- Observe / question
- Research
- Hypothesis
- Experiment
- Analyze data
- Conclude
- Back to step 3
Example
Let’s say you are a remodeler, and you want to offer something that differentiates you from your competition.
Observe
You have observed people hate living in their basements/hotels/dirty, dusty houses. They don’t want the project to drag on.
Research
Tons of people on Reddit and Facebook complain about contractors’ timelines being extended
Hypothesis
Guaranteed a clean timely remodel process
Experiment
Make 3 page variations with different offers, 2 that test your hypothesis and 1 control
- Guaranteed 3 month remodel or your labor if FREE
- Cover hotel costs for every day over 3 months
- Regular page about getting a remodel quote
Send $2,500 in ad spend to these pages and measure for conversions (form submits)
(Note: Test less variations with lower ad spend budget! In this example, each page would receive about $833 worth of traffic
Analyze & Conclude
Once the experiment is complete, see which page had the highest conversion rate (all else equal).
For example, if the “Guaranteed 3 months or labor is free” page converted 6% of visitors, while the others converted 3% this tells you that offer may be more compelling.
Repeat Hypothesis
Now that you have found a more compelling offer, you can conduct other tests based off your findings.
For example, Try guaranteeing different timelines, or try different page layouts.
Over time, you will be able to shake out who your ideal customer is, what they want, and what makes them take action.
All without blowing countless hours and dollars on a hail marry 😅
That’s all I’ve got for you today, I hope you learned what NOT to do, and have a better understanding of the importance of testing!
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