Adopting Sprint Testing is a shift in both mindset and process. Here’s how you can start making that leap:

Embrace Broad Targeting and Automation:

Loosen the reins on your targeting. Instead of painstakingly segmenting, try broad targeting and let the algorithm sort out who responds to which creative. Avoid tools like dynamic creative optimization (which automatically mixes and matches creative elements) which will screw your sprint tests. In other words, trust the platform’s AI more – give it freedom to find your winners, but only test one variable at a time.

Lower the Stakes of Individual Tests:

Allocate small budgets to experiments. Get comfortable with the idea that most of your creatives will fail. That’s okay (and expected) when each only costs a buck or two to try. You’re looking for the big hits that make the failures irrelevant. This requires convincing stakeholders that a high “failure rate” is fine when the wins are disproportionately valuable.

Generate Lots of Ideas:

Shift your team’s focus towards volume of ideas. Brainstorm more variations. Create multiple versions of copy, visuals, audience angles. It can help to set up a cadence – e.g., every week we launch a test of 20 new ideas. Quantity is your friend early on; quality will emerge from the data. Remember, you’re not putting all your money behind each idea, so you can afford to test some wild concepts.

Use Data Dashboards for Quick Reads:

Set up your reporting to catch early indicators. This might mean looking at click-through rates, cost-per-click, or 3-second video views very early on. Those metrics in the first hours can tell you which ads are grabbing attention. You don’t necessarily wait for final conversion data (which might trickle in days later) to make a cut/do-not-cut decision on a creative test. The platform knows fast – and you can know fast, too, if you watch the right metrics.

Iterate in Rounds:

Think of each “sprint” as a round. After round 1, take your winners and analyze why they won. Did a certain theme or style work? Use those learnings to craft round 2 of tests, perhaps with variations on the winning theme or completely new ideas inspired by what you learned. Each sprint makes the next sprint smarter. Over a few cycles, you’ll develop an intuition backed by actual data on what resonates with your audience. That’s far more robust than any pre-campaign market research or persona exercise.

Crucially, making the leap to Sprint Testing also means a cultural shift:

done is better than perfect, and “test and learn” is better than “predict and prevent failure.” In split testing culture, we often overthink and over-polish before launching because we treat each test as a significant investment. In sprint culture, you launch imperfect ideas proudly because the feedback is what polishes them. It’s a bit like the difference between waterfall and agile in software – one tries to plan for perfect execution, the other executes to discover what to do next. Marketing is far more akin to agile now.
The New Baseline for Serious Growth

At this point, you might be thinking, “This sounds like a lot of change. Is Sprint Testing really going to become the new normal?” The answer is an emphatic yes – in fact, it’s already happening.

The most aggressive and successful growth marketers have been quietly working this way for a while now, especially in fields like D2C e-commerce, apps, and any fast-paced online business. They kept it under wraps as a competitive secret, but the cat’s out of the bag. If you aren’t doing it yet, you can bet your competitor will. And once one team in a market starts running optimization circles around everyone else, it forces the rest to adapt or fall behind.

Sprint Testing is quickly becoming the baseline expectation for any marketing team that claims to be “data-driven” or “performance-oriented.”

It’s the logical evolution of A/B testing in an environment where automation and machine learning play an ever-larger role. It doesn’t throw away the scientific approach of testing; it supercharges it by leveraging technology and a mindset of abundance in testing.

The implications for you are profound. Adopting Sprint Testing can change the trajectory of your growth. Instead of eking out 5% gains here and there, you open the door to 10x improvements when you stumble on an outlier success.

Instead of being late to every trend, you ride the wave early because your rapid tests catch shifts in consumer response as they happen. Instead of letting intuition or the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion drive creative decisions, you democratize the process – the best idea can come from anywhere (junior staff, an off-the-wall brainstorm) because you’ll test it and the data will decide, not hierarchy or guesswork.

Let’s be clear: none of this is to say that strategy, brand, and thinking deeply about your customers goes away.

On the contrary, it frees you to focus more on the big picture and creative strategy because the testing machine takes care of the details. You spend less time agonizing “will this specific shade of blue or that call-to-action work better?” – you just test both and find out. Then you can spend that mental energy on understanding why certain messages resonate or brainstorming the next campaign theme.

Sprint Testing, in a way, takes a lot of the trivial decision weight off your shoulders.