Hypothesis on marketing

Though it’s often looked down on by consultant types, I’m a big proponent of planning, especially when it comes to web strategy and public relations. In mathematical terms, execution without a plan results in a vector that’s all magnitude and no direction - in other words, it takes a lot of energy to go nowhere. In many ways, marketing is part science, part creativity and a big of old-fashioned good luck. So, while planning is important, with all these variables, the danger is to get stuck in a plan that ends up taking you in the wrong direction when the world changes around you.

The goal of this phase is simply to build a logical argument that connects your problem statement to a comprehensible explanation of the market and the opportunities available to you, via the research data you have collected along the way. In other words, a good hypothesis takes your audience on a journey that begins with the problem statement and situation analysis, and proceeds to a clear view of actionable alternatives that will help your business and address the problem statement. Perhaps this seems obvious. It’s not. It’s difficult to simplify all the materials without losing the subtlety of different customer insights. If’s difficult to make trade offs, and more difficult to sell them internally to your stake-holders.more...