Marketing and Science
Is Marketing Science?
While we’re not proposing a deep philosophical debate here, we do want to examine the expectations and assumptions behind “marketing as a science” because they affect what we do and how we think about it.
4 Principles of Good Marketing Science:
- Marketing as a science is about objectively using data to support decision making. It’s about understanding how to collect and interpret data. It’s not just defaulting to the obvious metrics. It’s also about recognizing what data is missing. It’s about trying as much as possible to minimize biases to make good judgments with imperfect information in an uncertain world.
- Marketing as a science is about looking for patterns in the market and in customer behavior. It’s about turning those patterns into models and hypotheses that can be tested. It’s about figuring out ways to operationalize good responses to those patterns with a relative degree of precision. But it’s also about recognizing the probabilities and limitations of those patterns and being vigilant to changes over time.
- Marketing as a science is about embracing ideas from other scientific and engineering disciplines, such as: psychology, economics, engineering, etc. It’s about translating the work of other professionals into the context of marketing, at least as an inspiration for new models and hypotheses. It’s about keeping an open mind to new theories, while also critically examining their reliability and relevance. It’s about a constant drive for new learning.
- Marketing as a science is really about running good controlled experiments to test hypotheses. This is the heart of the scientific method applied to any discipline. It’s about designing good experiments. It’s about choosing meaningful hypotheses to test. It’s about iterating experiments. It’s about knowing when to stop. It’s about carefully considering the outcome of an experiment. It’s about assessing when to reuse the learning from a past experiment and when to revalidate it. It’s about knowing the answer to many marketing management questions is: test it.
Science in marketing is the systematic quest for knowledge. Not absolute truth, but effective working knowledge that can be applied to growing a business.
Ready to take a deeper dive? Here’s a roundup of our top posts on marketing and science. Happy reading!
Is Marketing Science or Art? Why Answering This Question Matters in the Digital Age
The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Why Cultural Differences Matters
Examples of Neuromarketing Done Well to Help Inspire Your Marketing Strategy
What Is Neuromarketing and Is It Better Than Traditional Marketing?
From the Eminent Team
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