Offering Client Trials: Prototypes vs Auditions
(Editorial note: I originally published this one over on the Hit Subscribe blog.)
Do you offer a trial?
I’ve run Hit Subscribe’s sales for five of our seven years of existence. And this is by far the most common question I field at some point during discovery.
The simple answer to the question is “sure, we can do that.”
We don’t bother to set any minimums on the amount of content you can commission. We’re not selling automobiles; economies of scale on content are marginal. You can buy as little as a single blog post if that meets your needs.
In fact, if you read our client bill of rights, you’ll see that we encourage you to de-risk. If you’re worried about doing something at scale, I view it as our obligation as a vendor to help you prototype success ahead of a large-scale commitment.
Where things get nuanced, however, is around the question of which risk you’re minimizing for when you ask about a trial. And that’s at the core of what I want to document here reference for future prospects. We’re happy to start small, but there’s a good chance we don’t think of a trial the same way you do.
Auditions vs Prototypes: What Risk Does Each Reduce?
To get specific about this, we view small batches as prototypes, and, importantly, not auditions. Consider the difference.
Auditions and Prototypes
- An audition is a subjective evaluation that de-risks against the judge having a large commitment to something they don’t care for.
- A prototype is an objective evaluation that de-risks against an engagement not achieving a goal or outcome.
A simple, if mundane, example of an audition is a wine tasting. Before purchasing an expensive bottle of wine from a winery, it makes sense to run a trial (audition) of “do I, the judge of wine, like this wine?”
In a professional context, auditions tend to, or at least should, move beyond simple aesthetics. The judge of a piece of content (ideally) isn’t evaluating whether they personally like it but rather acting as a proxy for others’ opinions or perhaps as some kind of designated expert in the medium. But the subjective, “do I approve of this” evaluation remains at the core.
A prototype, on the other hand, involves a measurable big-picture goal and a smaller experiment designed to provide fast feedback on an initiative’s ability to achieve that goal.
For instance, let’s go back to the winery. But this time, let’s say you have a goal to fill your small wine cellar with 200 bottles of wine, for less than $5,000, with wine that you feel good about serving to guests. Here your tasting becomes less important in favor of concerns like whether the bottles are in an acceptable price range, will fit in the cellar’s slots, and will appeal to unknown people.
In this world, a prototype might involve buying five bottles of wine within your budget, then confirming they fit in the cellar and guests seem to like them. If the run of five goes well, you can scale up your buying from the winery.
