Marketing: Reaching Customers With Science + Art

Phyllis Grove, Eastwick CMO-In-Residence

When I started conversations with Eastwick about joining the CMO-In-Residence program, the conversation naturally turned to my philosophy about marketing. I lead with two basic principles: 1) that marketing must first look at the business, capitalize on its strengths and offset its weaknesses and most importantly help achieve the business’ future objectives; and 2) that the best marketing occurs when science + art are married to create a compelling brand and effective communications strategy.

Over the last 5 years or so, I’ve observed that many individuals want to start the marketing planning conversation around which tactics will be used — how is remarketing performing? What search terms deliver the best ROI? When should we launch our referral marketing program? etc. The focus has shifted to the aspects of marketing that can be directly measured, from site traffic and email sign ups to clicks and conversion rates for specific marketing programs.

As a marketer whose career began at Procter & Gamble, I have deep-rooted beliefs about the importance of research, analysis and discipline to brand development and marketing planning. I love the fact that a plethora of modern marketing tactics can be tightly measured and that we are closer than ever to understanding the direct impact that marketing has on sales. And it’s important to use that measurement capability to show the ROI for marketing efforts and to continually improve marketing plan results. But to truly deliver results, tactics need to be rooted in a marketing strategy that matches business goals, a relentless customer focus and a strong brand with compelling stories.

That foundation of marketing strategy, customer focus and strong brand take us into the territory where marketing is as much art as it is science.

How does a brand develop fully connected customers? My advice is to combine art + science to understand your customer, define your brand and communicate why that customer should care about your brand. Below are the key questions to balancing art and science in your marketing.

Understand your customer

True customer understanding and compelling branding takes us into the emotional side, the place where personal opinions reign and measurements get fuzzier. That’s the area where you can really emotionally connect with your customer. And that emotional connection is important, as measured by a study recently covered in the the Harvard Business Review indicating that fully connected customers are 52% more valuable, on average, than those who are just highly satisfied.

What questions do you want to ask? What information do you need to feed your strategy?

What research tools do you want to use? A quantitative survey for your current users? A deep dive into whatever data you’ve collected over time or can find via site metrics and social followers? A comparison between your users and category users? A more qualitative tool like focus groups or 1:1 interviews?

Implement the research and analyze the data

Throw some art into the analysis to develop insights to take your customer definition to the next level, to truly dive into what’s important to your customers about your product or service and your brand.