Marketing, not just digital marketing, has definitely involved into a combination of art and science. And to be successful, you need inputs that come from two distinctly different kinds of people (brain types):
Marketing Technologists vs Marketing Creators
Marketing Technologists. People who understand the technology that can make marketing efficient and effective. These tend to be the left-brained “techie” types who understand the devices and networks consumers use, data science, and essentially know how to target and reach the consumers you seek.
Marketing Creators. People who understand how to communicate, both visually and through the written/spoken word. These tend to be the right-brained “creative” types who understand color theory, appreciate white space, and intuitively understand how to communicate with the consumers you seek in meaningful ways that induce movement.
Equally as important is understanding how to get these two types of people to work together and respect the value each other bring to the table.
Allow me to scold some of my fellow marketing professionals for a moment, please. When I was immersed in my PhD year, it became quickly apparent to me that there was a bit of a culture war going on between the new-wave technology-driven marketers who, honestly, were more “techies” than really marketers.
This issue still plagues our industry; technologists who build things because they can, not because they should. They understand the technological aspects of their creation, but not the human aspects.
On the other hand, I saw marketers with more traditional backgrounds who were on the defensive and simply focused on how the new things were deficient, rather than trying to understand how they could be appropriately modified for better results.
I have watched painfully (cringing, kind of like when you see a crash happening and you can’t do anything about it) as people I’ve known for a long time in radio, television, newspaper, and other traditional media – people who committed themselves to being high-quality marketers – put their heads in the sand and double down as it was obvious the new technologies were going to swamp them.
Rather than evolve, they simply stuck to their guns hoping something would change, but knowing it wasn’t likely to happen. I remember one radio station owner saying to me, “This Internet is just a fad and it will pass.” I just remember walking away from that conversation saying to myself, “Yikes. Sell your stock in that company.”
The culture clash cost both sides dearly. The new-wave technologists could have benefitted greatly from people with decades of experience in consumer marketing, but neither saw the value in talking. Traditionalists could have forged relationships with technologists that helped them evolve, survive, and thrive – but neither saw the value in talking.
The most common thing small business owners say to me: “We tried digital marketing. It didn’t work.” That’s a loaded statement, and it takes a LOT of time to unpack it with them to understand what they tried, what they expected to happen, and hopefully understand what could have been done differently for a better outcome.
Technology-first companies have too frequently brought platforms to market with ready, fire, aim strategies and created a lot of small businesspeople who are disappointed and take this “tried it, it didn’t work” position. That hurts all of us; professional marketers, businesses who need new customers, and even consumers because bad technologies affect both the business that used them and the consumers who were annoyed by them.
As a digital marketing agency not tied to specific platforms, we’re independent (on purpose). We believe that to bring you the best digital marketing strategy, we must be able to move from platform to platform in order to meet your needs.
