Experimenting with non-digital products and business ideas

Incremental experimentation in action

The benefit of incremental experimentation is obvious: improve a strategy, campaign or concept with minimal risk to its existing performance or appeal. But when it comes to non-digital products and business ideas, incremental experimentation isn’t always so straightforward.

Take Acid League as an example. When they first introduced their non-alcoholic wine club, Proxies, the product was offered through their existing brand. Our Editor in Chief was an early customer and remembers the brochures explaining her monthly delivery changing from 8 x 11 cardstock to tri-fold printer paper or the bottle shape changing with some shipment.

There were a few months where I started to receive four bottles of Proxie instead of three. All of these changes happened with no notice.

Sharon Milone

These incremental changes led Acid League to launch Proxies as its own brand. So while incremental experiments may surprise your customers at times, your ability to deliver a better product or service in the long run is truly what matters.

Bringing non-digital products to market

As a digital first brand, we’ve considered revenue ideas like dropshipping or launching a swag store, but where would we start? As always, it depends.

First, consider what you’re hoping to learn with your experiment–it could be sustainable package design, sliding scale pricing, appealing to a new customer segment, etc. Then, consider the cost of your experiment, both tangible and intangible. Will the introduction of a new offering confuse or distract customers? How many sales do you need to make (or avoid losing) during your experiment, to make your test worthwhile.

During the pandemic, we saw a lot of people and brands capitalizing on the need for masks. Hobbyists switched from crocheting cute animals to sewing beautifully patterned N95s. Lifestyle and fashion brands offered masks as add-ons to increase their cart size.

Developing a hypothesis for your experiment guides the direction of your test, so you can focus on gathering enough data to understand whether you want to make a permanent change.

Test your ideas without testing your financials

Rather than making incremental changes to your entire product line like Acid League, you may want to test your business idea on a controlled group of customers, or a new audience altogether. Get creative and attend local markets, create a pop-up store, set up a booth at a tradeshow or create an exclusive club.

Let’s say you’ve been creating videos to teach people how to cook. You have an idea for a line of kitchen products but can’t afford to invest in more than a limited run of production. Perhaps you create a pre-order list and start using your new kitchen gadgets in each video lesson. Or how about spreading the word at a local food festival by doing a live cooking demonstration?

What matters is getting in front of real customers and generating real sales, during your testing phase. Doing so will help you validate your idea in ways a survey never could.

Review feedback and (maybe) keep experimenting

If your initial experiment is poorly received, don’t be discouraged. Review the feedback you gather and keep experimenting. This feedback includes your own.

Have an honest look at whether continued experiments are worth the effort. Look at patterns in engagement and rejection from customers. Look at the mental toll it takes to market your existing product or service while trying to get a new product off the ground.

For better or worse, you may find that adjustments to your experiments result in adjustments to your attitude. And that’s okay. Self awareness makes all the difference when growing and managing a business.

To recap, if you’re interested in experimenting with a non-digital product or business idea, consider these steps:

1. Develop a clear hypothesis
2. Test your idea with real customers
3. Review feedback and keep experimenting

And if you want ideas on marketing your new product or business idea, read the original article from Delivra for insights and strategies on incremental experimentation in marketing