Pilot Best Practice

In midmarket and enterprise organizations, there is a formal new vendor acquisition process used to formalize the buying process. The person in charge of evaluating new vendors will often be the procurement team depending on the nature of the solution. It is the responsibility of the EAE to first determine who within the organization evaluates new vendors.

Within this new vendor acquisition process there is a structure to buying that is incremental in nature. This incremental buy is known as a pilot. The goal of a pilot test is to prove out the return of a solution before investing significant dollars and scaling it within the organization.

It is thus the responsibility of the pre-sale account executive to work with the buying team to structure the pilot test and lay the foundation for proving out the ROI with an adequate attribution methodology and agreed upon KPIs.

CORPORATE BUYING PROCESS KEY QUESTIONS FOR EACH ACCOUNT:

Who within the organization evaluates new vendors?

What do they look for in a marketing vendor and why? Is the evaluation conceptual or quantitative? (buying criteria and evaluation method)

What is the timing for both evaluating and then being able to add a new vendor? Can they add one at discretion if it makes sense or is there a quarterly or annual planning/budgeting schedule?

How do they quantify success of the vendor? (KPI and KPI level)

How do they track success via an attribution methodology?

How do they typically like to structure a test pilot with that vendor?

PILOT BEST PRACTICE:

I. PRE-SALE a. Connect with corporate buying team to engage in the new vendor evaluation process via the enterprise sales process to build business case for partnership b. Co-author solution, Buying Paradigm & ROI model (CAC, LTV, multiple), KPI & attribution method (ex. call tracking, pixels, store visits) c. Pick ROI & KPI metrics (ex. ROI vs. ROAS, CPA vs. CPL) d. Pick ROI & KPI goal for hypothesis test

II. MID-PILOT a. Run the pilot to work to prove out ROI model over time b. Campaign performance check-ins c. Performing monitoring and improvements (relative to key KPIs)

III. POST-PILOT a. Report with results (performance against KPIs & ROAS measurements given the outcomes) b. Improvements c. Strategy to grow spend on platform by updating ROI model and showing projected revenue and multiple from upgrade or scale (or simply justifying the scale/upgrade based upon beating KPIs)

The Hypothesis We Are Testing

The connection between user intent and a hypothesis test on our AdTech platform. Hypothesis test we are testing: The better conversion due to user intent on a business directory simply evaluating vendors, the better conversion rate on clicks and leads and thus better CPA/CPL and better ROI. The ability to isolate undecided buying intent with marketing dollars unlocks a better CPA CPL and ROAS.