Optimise: conversion rate optimisation, one change at a time.
One change, against the measure that named the constraint, held long enough to be read, then kept or reversed on the record.
Three changes at once answer nothing.
A quiet fortnight invites a rebuild. The headline is rewritten, the audience is widened and the budget is lifted in the same week, the numbers move, and nobody can say which of the three did it. The campaign has been changed but nothing has been learnt, so the next quiet fortnight starts from the same place.
Optimisation here is deliberately slower than that. One change, named before it runs, held for long enough that the result is a result rather than a fluctuation.
Five rules, and none of them is negotiable.
- i One change at a time Against the measure the diagnosis named. A second change waits until the first has been read, however obvious the second one looks.
- ii Named before it runs Which measure should move, in which direction, and by when. A change with no stated expectation cannot fail, which is another way of saying it cannot teach anything.
- iii Held for a full decision cycle High-value property decisions are slow. A change judged inside a week is usually judged on traffic rather than on enquiries, and on enquiries rather than on qualified ones.
- iv Kept or reversed, and written down A change that did not move its measure is reversed rather than left in place. The record of what was tried is the part that compounds.
- v Back to measure A kept change becomes the new baseline, and the loop runs again from the top.
What gets changed, in the order it is usually worth changing.
The order is not a rule of nature, and the diagnosis overrides it whenever it points somewhere else. It holds often enough to be worth writing down.
- 01 The page before the account A page change is cheap, reversible and reaches everybody who arrives. A media change takes days to relearn and moves the audience underneath the test.
- 02 The offer before the creative What a person is asked to do decides more than how the asking looks. A brochure request and a site visit are different offers, and they behave differently.
- 03 The follow-up before the budget Answering enquiries sooner costs nothing in media and usually moves the qualification rate further than more enquiries would.
- 04 The audience last Widening the audience raises volume and lowers quality, which is the easiest way to make a campaign look better while the pipeline gets worse.
Optimise hands the loop back to the start.
- THE LOOP How we measure The framework the three stages belong to: what is counted, what each measure means and what each one decides.
- 01 Measure What is recorded before spend starts, and how a source is attributed.
- 02 Diagnose The measures read in pairs until one pair names the constraint.
Optimisation is the third stage of the operating loop, and it returns to measuring property enquiry, which is where the loop starts again.
Trust-led marketing for an evolving era.
Three forces are reshaping how buyers research, evaluate and make high-value decisions.
