The Smarketing Blog: Sales, Marketing and the Customer Experience

Why is Internet Marketing like Science?

  

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Ready or not- it has been here for a while and if you are just coming around to this realization you may have some catching up to do.

But you are here, so you are looking at the right map to drive your marketing towards measurable growth for your business.

So what is this so called new age of marketing? Is it social media, is it SEO, is it email, is it web analytics?

Yes....and more.

In this new age of marketing, your customer is in more control of your message than your own marketing department. How you measure and understand that message is just one part of internet marketing. Don't believe me? See how fast a bad review of your product or service spreads on Twitter and that is all the evidence needed.

Having just returned from training at Omniture University, I will sum it up with this- the new age of marketing is when you start using data to make marketing decisions, not ego or guesswork. Scientific marketing is the new age marketing where you:

• Ask a Question (what is the offer and what is it's value, who is the target audience,   what do we define as success , how will we measure it and what action will we take from those measurements?)
• Do Background Research (who is the competition, what other options do customers have, what information do they need to make a purchase decision, how do they want that information presented to them and when?)
• Construct a Hypothesis (design and develop your campaign)
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment ( launch your campaign and track pre-determined measurements)
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion (what are the numbers telling us, what worked, what didn't, and why? What action is to be taken from the data?)
• Communicate Your Results (share and celebrate success, learn from and optimize failures)

Sounds like a lot of work? Well, I suppose it is much easier simply throw your marketing dollars into an inferno and hope for the best, but I would not recommend it.

It is time to move beyond the thought of recession marketing and into scientific marketing where you can actually plan for success.