The Science of Marketing

Occasionally I get the question- "Are marketing activities really worth it?"  Sure, it sometimes takes the more direct form of "Is this really going to help my company?" or the skeptical tone of "How much is that going to cost me?"  But the theme remains the same- people would love to measure the return on their marketing investments.  But is measurement really possible?

More and more, the answer is "yes".  The rise of direct marketing has yielded a wealth of statistics on open rates and click-throughs.  As more and more media move to the Internet, we can track referrals from a news story to a company web site.  And once visitors hit a site, we can track their every click, how much time they spent, and what resources they downloaded.  Our ability to measure is better than ever.  But are measurable results the only game in town?

While business managers and investors alike might nod in agreement, I’d argue that we have to continue to leverage "old school" activities that don’t produce oodles of statistics or fancy line graphs.  Don’t get me wrong, I love activities that produce measurable results- after all, this is The Science of Marketing and here we like things we can prove.  But to do the best job we can, we have to deploy the right mix of programs, some of which we can measure, some of which we can only believe to be effective.

We must continue to brief analysts on our strategies, and trust that they’ll provide better guidance to their clients and be better references for the press because of it.  We must continue to advertise in print publications and exhibit at trade shows, because sometimes people need a reminder that our companies exist and are active participants in their market.  And we must get out and talk to audiences about our latest solutions to their most vexing problems, because there is no substitute for personal touch.

There are plenty of activities we cannot measure, but that doesn’t mean we should scrap them all in exchange for stat-filled spreadsheets and fancy bar graphs.  We must continue to mix it up and do things that we can only trust will produce results.  We ust continue to believe.

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