Why Art and Science of Digital Marketing?
I love digital marketing because it is art and science combined into one idea, it is truly a remarkable segment of a business because it helps human beings exchange value with each other.
Have you ever thought that marketing is just scientific advertising? (There is a book called Scientific Advertising) It’s about experimenting between the science and the art provided to the audience and appealing to and influencing them in different ways toward a goal.
Your audience reaction depends on many things and studying human psychology, emotional triggers, and psychological behavior such as neuromarketing can greatly impact the creation of your marketing assets as well as how the strategies are combined to create loyalty.
There must be a way to organize these strategies and you can prioritize them through this form: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.
Your marketing strategy should consider the following areas of opportunity: Product, place, price, and promotion.
Another way to organize your marketing is by Reach, act, convert, and engage.
By having in mind that marketing is art and science merged into one, you can understand that experimenting with landing pages, doing keyword research, acquiring competitive intelligence, building outstanding creative assets, and leveraging artificial intelligence can greatly improve your key results.
You should never give up on advertising as it is an important part of a business. People might still have a negative perspective on marketing but it truly helps and supports the brand’s reputation for the short and long-term vision of the brand.
Test Your Experiments
There are many tools that you can use to apply scientific advertising to your business, you can use Google Optimize, Optimizely, VWO(Visual Website Optimizer), or other testing tools out there that can help you determine what is going on with your creative assets.
Once you start understanding that experimentation is key for marketing, you should be aware that it should always be evolving and learning from mistakes, if there was an ad that backfired for a marketing campaign on Facebook, you should correct it, write down what worked and what didn’t work, and keep pressing forward.
Remember that marketing is a constant process, marketing never stops and you should keep the engine running at all times if budgets are available. You will have failed experiments but that won’t make you stop reaching your audience, you should learn from them.
It is important to keep in mind that marketing has the capacity to make or break your brand, it either goes to the north star or goes south. If your core product or service is mediocre and your marketing delivers on a promise that it can’t sustain, many people will be disappointed.
You can have the greatest marketing in the world but if it doesn’t deliver on that promise, then your audience could be confused and sad.
Marketing Definitions
Let’s take a step back and understand what art and science mean in marketing terms. It is essential to comprehend this because many people see it as a direct process but in reality, it has a lot of touch points to consider:
- Marketing: Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service.
- Science: Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.
- Art: Art is the conscious creation of something beautiful or meaningful using skill and imagination.
- Experimentation: Experimentation (or conversion rate optimization for digital marketing experiments) is the process of trying methods, activities, etc. to discover what effect they have.
- Omni-channel: Omni-channel is a term to describe a business strategy that aims to provide a seamless experience across all channels, e.g. social media, email, organic search, etc.
- Brand: A name, symbol, or another marker that businesses use to distinguish their products from competitors and foster a public identity.
The Art & Science of Digital Marketing
When you are applying art and science simultaneously, you are having a more open perspective of how to apply these in your digital strategy and tactics, you are more open to out-of-the-box solutions and have a deeper understanding of how your creatives will impact your audience.
I recommend brainstorming with the creative team and making half of them think with an art perspective and the other with a scientific approach and understand both sides of the coin to make effective decisions and take action.
For the digital marketer that wants to apply art and science in their field, I recommend having a strong influence and knowing how to persuade others so they too use them simultaneously. Know thyself!
Involve Your Marketing Team
When your marketing team starts transitioning to this thinking model, there are high hopes that the results may be different than before as they will have a different perspective on the KPIs.
When marketers are making the transition, stakeholders need to understand this process and be flexible in their thinking as marketing is evolving almost every day.
Wouldn’t you agree that digital creatives have changed how people think about not just the brand, but about themselves and their own preferences?
To appeal to the user with art and science is one of the best ways to engage with them through digital assets, these could be banner ads, infographics, webinars, articles, videos, tutorials, guides, PDFs, and other digital media.
Change Your Perspective
The science of digital marketing landscape has changed and marketers need to apply new perspectives so they can understand their audience and through art and science, we can make better experiences for them.
This is something that both can benefit and it is unique for each individual, imagine if you are able to deliver unique ads to every single user that involved a creative, wouldn’t that be a sight?
Your perspective will change once you start viewing marketing through these lenses and it will be easier to identify how your audience would react if you make creatives and how they perceive your assets.
Conclusion (TL, DR): The Art and Science of Digital Marketing
Having an in-depth understanding of both terms can save you a lot of time when building your brand and marketing assets, it takes courage to fine-tune the creatives to always keep testing and making sure that the audience is always pleased in all of their senses.
Use both art and science to leverage their perspectives and experiment with your creativity.
Remember to apply these principles with your marketing team, as they will help you unlock new ideas and concepts that can boost imagination and wonder, pushing marketing and business objectives to new heights!