Academic and popular circles alike* have long debated whether marketing is a science, pseudo science or an unquantifiable art. The contentious issue: can the effect of marketing be measured. My position has always been that the more you know, the more you can measure and identify relationships between variables.

It’s simple. The more variables you consider, the more marketing is a science. The only thing stopping a marketing campaign from being an exact science is that many variables cannot be accessed. In science, an experiment is a manufactured environment where the variables are controlled. Outside the hygiene of the lab, when we throw a billboard in front of a highway, we don’t have the luxury of control.

We could, though. We could track every car that passed and everything each driver did once the saw the billboard. Reasonable? Probably not. But, there is a threshold of variables that should benefit a brand. It’s up to the marketing manager to determine how much they want to know. The aim here is not to prove causation but to monitor what happens and follow encouraging data. It’s a fools game trying to prove whether x causes y – it’s a fool’s game to measure success linearly.

Experiment. Monitor. Adjust. Make science. Make money.

Marketing is a science for people bothered to put in the effort. It’s not about metrics, it’s about access to data. A science-minded marketer uses data to make everyday decisions not just in a goal setting meeting.

*The phrase academic and popular circles alike is my favorite demonstration how hip professors are.