Clay Ostrom is the co-founder of a consultancy called Map & Fire which helps brands develop Lean Strategy. He was introduced to PickFu in a Medium article by Mike Fishbein, who we’ve also featured here on the PickFu Blog.

Message testing polls

Taking Mike’s advice, Clay used PickFu to conduct marketing message testing for two titles of a Medium article he was writing. He wanted to see which title and illustration had more click appeal.

The poll results were a perfect split – 25 preferred the puzzle pieces, and 25 preferred the blindfold. I’ve previously written about the value of a tied poll result, and Clay agreed. “For me,” he wrote in an email, “it was arguably more interesting than an obvious winner.” After reading and analyzing the comments, he concluded, “the more you connect with people around the value of the experience as a whole (understanding how people think), and the emotional connection, the more it reduces the importance of a definitive ‘right’ answer.”

Being a strategist, Clay decided to take it a step further. Using PickFu as a brand, he went through an exercise to identify what elements of value he experienced while using the polling service. These values were based on Bain & Company’s pyramid below:

After identifying key values that PickFu’s product addresses, he formulated four potential marketing messages:

• “Avoid the white-knuckle moment of launching a marketing message that you never really tested”
• “Get fast, in-depth understanding of how your audience really thinks about your product — in their own words.”
• “Customer insights so quick and easy, you’ll actually look forward to testing.”
• “Trade your mountains of raw data for clear insights that actually get you informed”

Clay delves into the process by which he arrived at these marketing ideas in a second article on Medium.

That’s when we here at PickFu decided to see what kind of traction these messages had. We tested the four options in a round-robin poll, where each option is pitted head-to-head against all the other options.

These were the results:

Though Option B, “Get fast, in-depth understanding of how your audience really thinks about your product — in their own words,” won overall, Option A, “Avoid the white-knuckle moment of launching a marketing message that you never really tested,” brought out some interesting insights.

“I wouldn’t have guessed white-knuckle would turn so many people off….or simply be misunderstood,” Clay said. “Great example of the bias we have as marketers and writers, where we may take for granted terms as being commonplace or at least not off-putting.” In addition, some respondents “didn’t like it because it created a sense of anxiety, which… is actually a benefit,” Clay noted. “That tension can be a motivator to using a product.”

The white-knuckle idea goes to show that even if an option doesn’t “win” in a poll, the comments reveal what audiences associate with each message, and the feelings they have about your product. Synthesizing the comments in aggregate helps develop what might become secondary selling points or brand pillars, and lead to better communication and messaging overall.

If you’re looking to hone your own marketing messages, test your ideas using PickFu now!