Survey: Marketing Is a Balanced Blend of Art and Science

Marketing has several components, and one survey recently shed light on how much of it is an art compared to a science.

Chiefmartec and Third Door Media surveyed 637 industry professionals to gauge where marketing falls in terms of science and the arts. The majority (50.3 percent) said that marketing is both an art and a science. However, the results were more skewed toward the science end of the spectrum as a whole, with 30.6 percent saying marketing is more science than art and 8.5 percent indicating it’s mostly science.

Survey participants were asked about the marketing terms they associate with art and science as well. When questioned on the art of marketing, some of the words that came up were “creative,” “design,” “content,” and “brand.” A few of the terms selected by participants when asked about the science of marketing were “data,” “analytics,” and “technology.”

In correlation with these results, 63.4 percent of respondents said they believe that data-driven decision marketing is more of a science than an art.

Working Effectively with Marketing Data

In terms of making data-driven engagements, marketers are still struggling to tap into the information they collect in a timely manner.

The “Empowering the Data-Driven Customer Strategy” report from the CMO Council found that just seven percent of marketers believe they are always able to deliver real-time, data-driven engagements across their touchpoints with customer data. Just more than a quarter (28 percent) said they can only deliver a “handful” of these types of experiences through their touchpoints.

“While the customer wants to see real-time responses and reactions to their behaviors, what we are finding is that marketers are still dealing with complex processes and offline data, which is delaying their access to the intelligence they need to create the next best action with a customer,” said Liz Miller, senior vice president of marketing for the CMO Council.