Middle Management’s New Fad: A/B Testing on Strategy.

Some marketers & managers actually think they should A/B test their marketing strategy.

A while back I read this article that essentially says stop wasting your time on A/B testing insignificant things.

Recently, I've ran into the other kind of problem: using A/B testing to decide between two completely different marketing strategies. To my amazement, I actually know people who think it’s a good idea to do A/B testing on the pricing and the products offered.

The problem, of course, is a lack of consistency. In the world of internet and social media marketing, it’s NOT a good idea to offer different things to different customers. Why? Because this is a directly opposite force to virality. You want to make your product/service/website shared and spread. How can this possibly happen when a person tells and shares thing A with his friend, but his friend is offered thing B?

But you know, this virality killer is not really what bothers me. What bothers me most is that this A/B testing on strategy is a symptom of a lack of responsibilty. Marketers and managers don’t want to decide between two or more strategies and take responsibility on their decision in case of failure. So they sell their inability to decide as a new and innovative way of “agile marketing” or any other shit name you want to call it.

In the bottom line, A/B testing on strategy is harmful both for virality and for leadership in the organization.