Marketing experiment design starts with translating a business question into what a test will actually measure. This matters because a common pitfall is running a test that answers a different question than the one being asked. Without that translation step, teams end up with statistically valid results that are useless for the actual decision. This video explains how treating marketing science as translation closes that gap.
Why Marketing Experiment Design Starts With Translation, Not Statistics
Marketing experiment design starts with translation, not statistics, because the hardest part of a test usually isn’t running it correctly, it’s making sure the test actually answers the business question someone meant to ask. In this video, Jon Lorenzini, Chief Marketing Science Officer at LiftLab, describes his own role, and marketing science generally, as being a translator and storyteller, someone who breaks complex concepts into fundamental parts using analogy. He tests his own explanations on his parents: if a presentation passes what he calls the “Mom & Dad test,” meaning they’d arrive at the correct conclusion and understand the underlying concept in advance, he considers it explained well enough to bring to a client.
That same translation instinct is what prevents the most common pitfall he sees: advertisers running a test that isn’t actually measuring what they think it is, only discovering the mismatch once they try to act on results that don’t answer the question they meant to ask. Lorenzini frames good marketing science as a two-way translation process throughout, from the client’s business problem into a specific test design, from that test’s results into something the product team can act on, and back again as pressure from both sides shapes what gets built and tested next.
In this video, you’ll learn:
How to simplify complex marketing data for better communication
Why testing design is critical to achieving meaningful results
The importance of the “Mom & Dad test” for clarifying concepts
Common pitfalls advertisers face when setting up incrementality testing
How to facilitate better alignment between marketing and product teams
TIME STAMPFull Video Transcript: Marketing Experiment Design as Translation Explained
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LiftLab’s Jon Lorenzini explains why marketing science is fundamentally a translation job, and how that shapes good marketing experiment design.
[0:00 – 0:46] The Role of a Translator in Marketing Science
What I do, as well as the role of marketing science in general, is being a translator, a storyteller, and being able to break down complex concepts into fundamental parts. So, use of analogy. A lot of the practice that I do is with my parents. I will walk them through a presentation, and if it passes the Mom & Dad test, that means it’s ready to be translated, and unfortunately they’re now becoming really good marketers. It’s almost like a second career for them, where if they understand it, if they would arrive at the correct conclusions, if they could understand in advance either statistical concepts or marketing science concepts, that to me is, I’ve explained it well enough. So what I do, either through the sales pitches or through the marketing science discussion with my clients, is first translate the client’s problems to what we’re actually testing.
[0:55 – 1:16] Common Pitfalls in Advertising Tests
I think this is a pitfall for a lot of advertisers, that they run a test but they’re not measuring what they think they are measuring, and then when it becomes time to make those results actionable and to be able to say, “Hey, we ran this test, now what do I do?” and then you go, “Well, that test didn’t answer that question, it answered this question.”
[1:16 – 1:40] Translating Insights for the Product Team
So really it’s getting ahead of translating their problems to test design, the test design to results that they can use, and then, as we learn, “Hey, maybe there’s something we could have done better,” translating those to the product team. So it’s a little bit of a two-way street, from the clients to the product, and the product back to the clients, all through the translation process of what’s being built, what should be built, based off of those pressures from the two different sides.
Key Lessons: Designing Marketing Experiments That Answer the Right Question
Role of a translator: Marketing science is fundamentally about storytelling and breaking down complex, technical concepts into fundamental parts that clients can easily understand and act upon.
Design consistency: Advertisers often face failures because they measure the wrong variables; success requires mapping business problems directly to specific, well-defined test designs.
Two-way communication: A successful marketing science strategy acts as a two-way street, where insights from testing inform product development and organizational pressures shape future experimentation.
