Why Your Favorite Marketing Framework Probably Isn’t Scientific (and that’s okay)
Frameworks are great. They help us break complicated scenarios down into more digestible components, and allow for more effective analysis. This is particularly useful in marketing, where categorization and segmentation is critically important.
That said, most frameworks - in marketing and in business more generally - are not scientific. In this article we’re going to explore why that is, and, more importantly, why it’s important. After all, marketers have been under pressure to behave more “scientifically” since the 1930s. What gives?
Falsifiability: The Test for “Scientific-ness”
Falsifiability is relatively simple test. But it’s a critically important one.
If a statement, theory, or idea is falsifiable, then the possibility exists for proving it false. If there is no possible way to prove it false, it is non-falsifiable.
Categorizing hypotheses and theories as falsifiable or non-falsifiable is useful - if not essential(1) - for scientific inquiry. If something is falsifiable, then it is worth further investigation; or at least the possibility for further investigation exists. If it is non-falsifiable, you shouldn’t bother. It’s a waste of time.
The logic here is pretty straightforward. If there is no conceivable way to show something false, it’s impossible to design an experiment to do so.
Think back to middle school science class: to perform an experiment, you need a hypothesis. That hypothesis could be proven true (hooray!) but it could also be shown false. There’s no point in investigating something that will always be true.
For science to be iterative and progressive, our time is best spent investigating things that at least could be proven false.
Illustrating Falsifiability: 2 Examples
Like with most abstract concepts, it’s helpful to illustrate falsifiability with specific examples.
Let’s look at an example of a falsifiable statement first.
1) Statement: All swans are white.
This is a classic example of a falsifiable statement. Whether or not it is true (it’s not, contrary to the beliefs of pre-1697 Europeans) is irrelevant. What matters is that the possibility exists for disproving it. In this case, designing an experiment to disprove it is simple: we just need to see a non-white swan.
2) Statement: All bachelors are unmarried.
This is a classic example of a non-falsifiable statement. There is no conceivable way to show a bachelor who is married, because “unmarried” is implicit in the definition of “bachelor.”(2)
A falsifiable statement involving bachelors would be along the lines of “All bachelors are unhappy.” While this may be a common assumption in society, the possibility exists for proving it false; we just need to find a happy bachelor. (Note that the existence of a happy bachelor is irrelevant, the mere fact that we can think of a way to show it false is what matters).
Falsifiability is important for scientific inquiry because it helps us identify what is worth investigating and what is not.
Is Your Favorite Marketing Framework Non-Falsifiable?
To illustrate the non-falsifiable (and non-scientific) nature of many marketing frameworks, I’m going to examine a classic: the marketing funnel. Since most branches of business have one sort of funnel or another, I’m hoping it’s also a pretty universal example.
If you’re unfamiliar, this is how the marketing funnel is traditionally conceived:
Potential customers move through each stage of the funnel until they finally “convert” (ie, purchase).(3) There are other ways you can chop this framework up - usually by adding sub-stages to each stage - but for our purposes this doesn’t really matter.
It’s hard to deny that this particular framework is very useful.
Potential customers often do not associate the problems they face with products on the market. It’s when they research their specific problem that they become aware of solutions, ideally one of which is your product. Once a potential customer has surveyed the landscape of possible solutions, they consider them for purchase. Needless to say, how you talk to potential customers who are considering purchasing your product should be significantly different than how you talk to them before they know you exist.
So yes, the framework is useful.
But is it scientific? Considering its value, we might be tempted to assume that our marketing funnel was built over years of hypothesizing and testing as neolithic marketers slowly inched toward enlightenment.
Probably not. The marketing funnel is non-falsifiable. And for a fairly straightforward reason:
There’s no conceivable situation where a potential customer starts considering the purchase of a product before becoming aware of it. It’s self-evident.
The same can be said for conversions. There’s no conceivable situation where someone buys a product without being aware of it, or considering it. It’s implicit in the nature of purchasing decisions.
Just like “unmarried” follows necessarily from the concept of “bachelor” (there are no married bachelors by definition), the marketing funnel follows necessarily from the concept of purchasing decisions.
And that’s okay.
Just like knowing that “bachelors are unmarried” is useful if you are watching “The Bachelor” (the show takes on a rather different meaning otherwise), the marketing funnel helps us make sense of a universal truth in business.
We don’t need to wrap everything in a neat little “scientific” wrapper.
What’s the Point?
So what’s the point in figuring out if a framework is falsifiable or non-falsifiable? For the same reason the distinction is useful in science. It gives us focus.
There are plenty of falsifiable things in business worth investigating scientifically. Sales approaches, email optimization, hiring techniques: even activities within a funnel are falsifiable and worthy of scientific, data-driven investigation.
Approaching a non-falsifiable framework scientifically tends to be as useful as statistically analyzing differences between the marriage status of bachelors in the 1800s and the marriage status of bachelors in the 1900s.
Comparing and critiquing non-falsifiable frameworks - those immutable triangles, trapezoids, and 2x2 matrices we love so much - requires a different approach. As it happens, there’s a discipline that’s been debating universal, non-falsifiable concepts for millennia.
Philosophy.
To tweak and perfect frameworks that are non-falsifiable, designing experiments is a mistake. Any attempts to “prove out” a non-falsifiable framework will always support the assumptions underlying it (eg, you won’t make any progress because your experiments will only serve to pat yourself on the back).
Instead, philosophical methods - such as logical inference, analysis of underlying principles, and refutation of premises - will be more fruitful.
Footnotes
1) Like with most things in philosophy, falsifiability as a criterion for what is scientific is still debated (though it is accepted by the US Court System). As an interesting aside, the rule falsifiablity itself is non-falsifiable - this is fine because we don’t want to test for criteria for science with science, since that would be circular. See begging the question.
2) Students of philosophy will recognize this as analytic a priori knowledge: knowledge that logically follows from an object’s definition.
3) In some instances a “conversion” might just indicate the point where a prospect is handed over to the sales team. In which case a whole new funnel starts.
