The Hypothesize-Test-Evaluate-Repeat Loop (And Why Documentation Makes It Work)

If You're Not Documenting It, You Did It for Nothing

This is the part that gets skipped most often, and it's the part that matters most. If you're not documenting or keeping a track record of your hypothesis and your conclusions, ultimately all of this was done for nothing. Not "less effective" — for nothing. The most important aspect to this entire process is actually documenting the hypothesis and the conclusion, so you end up with a proven record of everything you've done in the past and its outcomes. Skip that step and there's no beating around it: it's really difficult to create strong forward momentum without recreating or repeating a lot of the same past mistakes.

The Loop: Hypothesize, Test, Evaluate, Repeat

Once documentation is in place, the actual mechanics are simple. You use your hypothesis to evaluate the performance of your decision-making when it comes to creating your ads, then let the outcome play back based on its actual performance. From there you're just going to repeat the process: hypothesize, test, evaluate, repeat. Simply put, that's all you're going to be doing — the loop is the whole system.

Refine Your Analysis Into Sharper Conclusions

The quality of that loop depends on how carefully you analyze each round. When you're doing the analysis of your hypothesis, take extra good note of what actually happened with the data and the specific components of the ad you were specifically testing within that hypothesis. Then refine what you're getting from your results and continue to roll that up into more potent conclusions — each cycle should leave you with a sharper hypothesis than the one before it, not just a bigger pile of data.

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