Marketing is not a “hard science.” Why do scientists treat it like one?

There is a large difference between this more formal description of marketing and the more colloquial understanding shared by most Americans, which focuses on the promotion and selling of products or services. This understanding of marketing fits in the single “P” of Promotion in the more formal description above.

For the purposes of this newsletter and the ones that follow, we consider marketing to be the identification of a need in the market place, and the matching of a product or service to that need at a profit.

Is Marketing a Science?

Whatever the definition used, almost all scientists would agree that marketing is not a science. While great strides have been made in describing human behavior in the marketplace, the ‘general laws’ of human behavior are not really laws, not in the same way that the ‘laws of genetics’ are laws. Human behavior is not universal, and observation and experimentation in the marketing sphere rarely yield strictly reproducible results.

Many marketing experts would disagree and claim that marketing is a science. Rather than attempt to referee this rather pointless argument, I’ll take the position that while marketing may be a social science, it is definitely not a ‘hard’ science.

One of the clearest ways to distinguish Science from Marketing is to examine their respective goals. Science seeks to understand, while marketing seeks to sell. Science seeks to describe, marketing to communicate.

Completeness

These goals: description and communication, are fundamentally different. The goal of description encourages, and in many cases demands, completeness. For example, the investigation of RNAi is rapidly expanding our understanding of the expression of proteins, and a complete picture of protein expression, and therefore human health, is incomplete without an understanding of RNAi. This example is especially pertinent because we don’t yet understand how RNAi works in its entirety. And we seek a complete understanding of RNAi both for the sheer joy of the intellectual pursuit, and to better understand its impact on human health.

This drive for completeness, for total understanding, for the ability to describe a mechanism down to the smallest detail, is built into the discipline. It shows up in many ways. For example, when reviewers submit comments about journal submissions they point out the unanswered questions in the authors’ work; they want to complete an incomplete picture.  It also shows up in the regulations that govern much of the drug development industry; the FDA requires a large measure of completeness, and is not shy about asking for additional information.

Marketing, on the other hand, is a discipline focused not on knowledge and description, but on communication. Communication rarely needs to be complete to be effective. In fact, complete communication is often less effective. If this sounds contradictory, just ask yourself if you have ever told a date (or a friend or spouse) too much information. Communication that is complete is often less effective.

The scientific discipline, with its emphasis on being complete, has trained scientists to answer every question. So scientists tend to treat marketing like a refereed journal submission, with citations and footnotes galore. “If only I can answer all their questions, they’ll be sure to buy.” This attitude is particularly prevalent if the purchaser also has scientific training.

From a marketing standpoint, for every audience, however, saying less can be more effective than saying more, particularly when the goal is to help people understand why they might want to buy something.

Buyers’ need for trust

People don’t make buying decisions based solely on information; they buy based on trust. They use information to build trust, but information by itself is ‘trust-neutral’ – it can create trust, or it can destroy it. People only buy in ‘high-trust’ situations. Think about the purchases you make in your own life, and you’ll find this to be true. When you buy food, you trust that the food is safe for consumption; otherwise you wouldn’t buy it. When you buy a house, you trust that the structure is sound, and the information you receive when you pay for an inspection will increase (or decrease) your trust level in the suitability of the house. At the car dealership, you may not trust the salesperson, but you trust the company who made the car to produce a quality product.

Marketing is one way to help establish the trust that supports a purchase decision. And the process of purchasing is rarely a single decision, but is typically a series of decisions, and a series of steps that lead to the final purchase decision.

The big mistake

When scientists (or anyone, for that matter) treat marketing like a discipline that demands completeness, they make one big mistake: they misunderstand the needs of the audience. Purchasers need a feeling of trust in order to take the next step along the steps in the purchasing decision tree and to build this trust, they need information, but only just enough information. Too much information can actually inhibit them from taking the next step.

Web sites for early stage companies are particularly potent examples of this phenomenon. The typical start-up wants to attract money from investors. The typical investor needs face-to-face contact before making a commitment. But rather than focusing on the goal of fostering this face-to-face contact, the typical web site tries to answer every question, and in doing so, actually inhibits the desired face-to-face contact. It is easy to spot these sites; they consist of page after page of information and technical data, over-communicating in the hope of convincing the reader. On the other hand, some web sites will provide just enough information to intrigue the viewer. They recognize that there are some questions that the web site can’t answer, and that there are lots of questions that the site shouldn’t answer. Not if the ultimate goal is to get the prospect to take the very next step along the purchase decision chain.

While web sites are, as I said, a particularly potent example of this phenomenon, they are not unique. Brochures, on-screen presentations (e.g., Powerpoint®), direct mail, email, interactive demos, videos, trade show booths – all of these can suffer from information overload, which comes from a tendency to try to communicate the entire story.

Communicating everything about a product or service ignores the fact that the audience typically doesn’t want to know everything, at least not right away. And even if they did, giving them every answer defeats the purpose of marketing, which is to help the audience build enough trust to take the very next step along the purchasing path.

Ironically, this is especially true if the audience consists of scientists. Research we have done shows that scientists who are considering purchasing a technical product or service consider themselves “immune” to marketing. But this research clearly demonstrated that these same scientists will change behaviors and attitudes based upon marketing messages and marketing activities. The conclusion is obvious: while the scientists we interviewed considered themselves “immune” to marketing, they actually weren’t. I’ll discuss this research more in a future issue, but I’ll share one interesting result now: these scientists reacted against getting too much information too early in the buying process.

How much is enough?

If it is a common mistake to say too much, and say it too soon, then how do you know how much information is necessary, and when it should be provided? The answer to those questions won’t fit in the available space, so let me just say that the answers lie in careful consideration of the needs of the different audience segments you want to reach, and the desired change in attitude or behavior you are seeking.

How much information is enough? At each step in the purchasing chain, provide just enough information to accomplish two goals: to build your audience’s feeling of trust, and to enable them to take the very next step along the purchasing chain. And then recognize that after they have taken this next step, their information needs will change, so you will need to provide different amounts and types of information as they move along the purchasing chain.

Looked at in this way, it is clear that successful marketing requires a fundamental understanding of how people make decisions as they navigate the purchasing chain, as well as the amount and type of information they require at each step.

Less is more

To increase your marketing effectiveness, recognize that your audience, even though they may be scientifically trained, doesn’t need every possible piece of information in your possession, at least, not right now. So, if you say less, focus on building trust and work to enable your audience to take the very next step, you’ll accomplish more.