

Hack Google Adwords to help you pick a name for your product - kentf
http://www.ewakened.com/2011/08/using-adwords-to-find-the-right-name/

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arkitaip
I've read about this method for name generation many times before and there
always seems to be a lack of data to show the method's level of quality or
relevance. Would love to hear a statistician's take on this.

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metachris
Fully agree, but the author is not using AdWords to generate names, but to
have a number of names (4 in this case) compete with each other (running the
exact same ad, just changine the name). The reported outcome in that case was
80% of the clicks went to "Autovate", although we don't know that all
variations got equally exposed.

[edit] The four names in question were Motiveatr, Autovate, Autovator, My Auto
Motive.

[edit] (Removed rant on the name Motiveatr)

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kentf
haha agreed. My Auto Motive I thought would do well though ;)

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brendino
This concept can even be taken further - rather than testing just a name, use
AdWords to test your entire product _before_ even building it.

For example, if you are thinking of opening an online business selling
widgets, you can build a test website and advertise it using AdWords. Provide
a fake checkout process, but rather than processing credit cards, just inform
your users that your product is not yet available (at a point in the workflow
where it's clear they intend to pay already). Then, with a quick calculation
on the data, you have a rough idea of how profitable your business will be
upon launch.

Obviously, it's not a perfect model, but still a very nice way to gather
market data for cheap before you invest the time and money to build anything.

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zokiboy
With $20 budget and 4 versions this seems like a random spike in data. If you
are going to use this method I suggest to use Google AdWords Campaign
Experiments (built-in tool). It will tell you if your results are
statistically significant. There is also Excel spreadsheet to download and
play with numbers to see if results are significant.

Second caution. This approach only tests what's the best name for your ad. It
doesn't tell you what is the best name for your product.

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FuzzyDunlop
Interesting method but the author seems a little surprised that doing market
research actually works. His sample size compared to the population seems just
a liiiiittle bit too small to yield meaningful results from though and there's
no real indicator of its reliability.

What would _really_ be interesting is a long running series of these with
larger sample sizes. Might cost a bit but you could probably come up with a
reasonable hypothesis test and some solid results.

Fair play to him if it's not just a fluke.

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sheaninesix
Smart way to add some interesting, relevant data to your initial product
development, period.

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c4m
I'm starting to become tired of such liberal use of the words 'hack' and
'hacker'. _Maybe_ 'marketing hack' would have been ok, but honestly there
isn't even any programming involved here.

On an entirely separate note, nice product name. And that does seem like an
interesting method for picking one.

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kentf
I debated the name and really tried not to, but I think it does fall under the
definition of a hack... I could be wrong. Sorry if I mislead. Was not the
intention.

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aparadja
I think "a clever use of something for a purpose it wasn't originally made
for" can be rightfully called a hack. Doesn't seem misleading at all to me.

