You know the old lines and adages. “Marketing is a dark art.” “I know half my marketing budget isn’t wasted, I just don’t know what half.”
These are common refrains of the marketing world. It’s always been the marketer’s job to stir the soul, win the heart, or at the very least relate convince people to buy.
As technology has advanced, the industry has turned its eye towards more precise ways of measuring performance and engagement. With the rise of the internet, mobile and social, you could see results as they came in. Science is the new buzzword.
The marketing nerds are taking over for the well-dressed creative types.
This narrative ignores a lot of history, though. Marketing may be recognized for it’s art, but the industry has always sought out data and methods to help guide decisions. It’s just that science wasn’t always “there”.
It’s not that artful marketer’s resisted science, they just worked with the science they had. Bottom line: There’s always been a tension between the art and science of marketing.
But we’re reaching a Golden Age of marketing where art and science are finding that perfect equilibrium. The ability to measure is met with the ability to analyze what the metrics mean. And the data is not only driving better decisions, but also freeing marketers to be more daring, to experiment, to explore the edges of well-known channels and venture into utterly new ones.
That’s why we worked with the marketing geniuses at JESS3 to put together the infographic below: The Road to Modern Marketing. Our goal was to illustrate the tension between art and science through different periods in recent marketing history, and how modern marketing is tying everything together.
With Eloqua Experience launching tomorrow, when modern marketers from around the globe will gather to show how they are using science and art, we couldn’t imagine a better time to unveil it.
Feel free to download the infographic by clicking here. And you can still join us at Eloqua Experience by registering on-site.
