Marketing With the Scientific Method

The scientific approach could help you with your marketing.

"Are you crazy? Marketing and science are two different things!"

You'd be surprised. You'll see what I mean when you read below.

Knowing this could mean the difference between knowing what you are doing and feeling around in the dark -- in whatever your endeavour.

Many people say "test, test, test."

I prefer to say, "experiment, experiment, experiment." Here's why.

I'm just using the lingo I'm more familiar with.

The scientific method is

Make a hypothesis
Do an EXPERIMENT to TEST that hypothesis
If necessary, refine your hypothesis and TEST it again....

For example, in physics....

HYPOTHESIS.... Einstein said that gravity is due to space-time curvature.... A consequence of this (if it is true) is red-shift -- that is, if light goes UP against a gravitational field, the light will become "redder," that is the frequency will become lower -- this is known as "red-shift"....

EXPERIMENT.... This was tested by Pound and Rebka in 1960. They sent a photons ("particles" of light) from the ground up to their detection device at the top of a tower. To detect red-shift, they used an extremely sensitive method called the Mossbauer effect.

RESULT.... In this case the hypothesis was confirmed -- they directly saw the red-shift which occurred just from a photon working against the earth's gravity as it traveled up alongside the tower towards their detector.

Now.... See how this can apply to marketing?

HYPOTHESIS.... People will buy hand-made chairs over the internet if I provide some great photos of my chairs, along with positive testimonials.

EXPERIMENT.... Try it out. Set up the web site and get some traffic going.

RESULT.... Well, you'd have to try it to find out, but I do believe I've seen a successful web site for (pretty expensive) rough-hewn hand-made chairs.

I think where marketing may differ from straight scientific experimenting in the physical sciences is that experiments in marketing are more complicated. Human beings are quite complicated, and many things can change. There can be many factors in the success or failure of a marketing experiment.

What might work and be "hot" one year may be ice cold the next. So, I think finding the "universal truths" in marketing could be more difficult -- since you may have thought you found a universal truth, only to find that society has changed and your "universal truth" no longer works.

Ben Suarez, in his book "7 Steps to Freedom II," talks about four elements of a successful remote marketing campaign.... PPPM -- Product, Prospect, Promotion, and Media. His theory is that you've got to have all four right for it to work.... This is a great theory -- probably the best I've seen, which is based on Ben Suarez's own scientific marketing experiments.

One thing which has surprised me is that there are quite a few of us "scientific types" out here, doing our own experiments....

There are also many people who I think of as "scientific types," even though they don't have any formal scientific training that I know of. You don't need scientific training to make it work!

This is an interesting place to be. :)

Best wishes,

Dien Rice

(Ph.D. in Physics)