Marketing is About Math AND Creativity

This article is part of our series on Lessons Learned at South by Southwest 2010, a popular technology conference.

One of the better panels I saw at SXSW 2010 was the “Is Too Much Math Killing Marketing” panel.  While the topic of marketing was a generic one, the lessons still apply to tourism, whether that’s your website, your brochures if you have them, or any other marketing collateral.

The summary of this panel to me was in essence:  marketing is about math AND creativity.  Here’s why.

Marketing with Too Much Math

I paraphrase, but a panelist said that if we all over-refine our sales content and images over and over again to get the highest conversion rates possible, we’ll all start looking the same: a big pile of grey mush.  That’s not fun to do and the result for the consumer isn’t pretty either.

For small businesses, the problem is worse:  we often don’t have the time or money to do extensive testing.  And the unfortunate reality is that  the data isn’t always great.   Another great point that came out of the panel is that we can’t test all of the variables.  For example, your ice cream sales at your storefront shop might be down because of the weather, not because you changed the sales price.  But you wouldn’t know unless you weren’t measuring the weather too!

Marketing with Too Much Creativity

I believe the quote from one of the panelists was “creativity without conversions equals zero.”  And he’s right:  we all have seen those fancy, out of this world website designs and thought, hmm – looks nice.  But what is it?

You have to tie great designs back to the bottom line.  But you also have to make sure that your designs are creative enough to stand out from the crowd.

It’s All About Balance

As with many things in life and business, balance goes a long way.

• Get some math.  Make sure you are tracking the variables that are important.
• Get creative.  How are you going to be different?

To Learn More

Did you have know we have a whole page full of eMarketing for tourism resources?  Check it out and make sure that your online (and offline) marketing strategies are in balance.

photo by di