Introducing thin slicing
A gift from our colleagues in software development
Marketers aren't the only ones trying to respond quickly to shifting customer demands and deliver new and engaging experiences at speed.
In software development, the Agile school of thought was created to help teams do exactly that. Experts there have honed numerous practices to help break down the barriers to effective, timely delivery.
And there’s one approach in particular that could be extremely useful for marketers: thin slicing.
Thin Slicing is where you build a minimal (but robust) strand of end-to-end functionality to prove something can work, and you then iteratively add to it in pursuit of a measurable goal. ”
Thin slicing is an Agile practice where large projects are sliced up into smaller deliverables and launched iteratively, rather than all at once.
Usually, that means choosing one specific user group and delivering a minimum viable product (MVP) version of new software for them quickly, before iterating on it and rolling out new capabilities to others.
At its core, it’s a remarkably simple concept. When you’ve got something big to deliver, start with a small but high-impact part of it, then learn from what users think of it to increase the impact of your wider project.
If thin slicing is applied in the right way, it can help marketers achieve some of their biggest strategic goals.
Prove the value and ROI of your campaigns quickly to secure further buy-in.
Validate campaign approaches and strategies to avoid overinvesting in ineffective efforts.
Move faster to seize the clearest and most time-sensitive market opportunities.
Streamline content creation and approval, remove bottlenecks, and accelerate processes.
