I've always been a little wary of many who profess marketing expertise. I think it's because I'm suspicious of anyone who makes claims of predictability in the context of any dynamic, social process.
On the other hand, I've been fortunate to work with some very fine marketers who a) understand that stimulating the sales of anything substantially new and different is fraught with uncertainty that cannot be resolved analytically and b) the best approach to resolving such uncertainty is through experimentation. As Al Ries might say, experiment until you find a sales tactic that works, then build a marketing strategy around that tactic.
Mario Schulzke is such a marketer. In new new blog, Scrappy Marketing, Mario writes:
To a lot of people, marketing is a science. I disagree. Marketing is the ultimate science experiment. While through learning and past experience marketers can make some pretty good guesses about what might work and what won’t, it ultimately comes down to testing a variety of different ideas and then scaling the ones that do work.
In order to run a successful marketing experiment, you have to be able to do two things. Test and Fail. Then repeat.
Dave, thank you for the mention. I always look forward to your entries.
Posted by: Mario | February 04, 2009 at 03:52 PM