Marketing is the science of data and creativity

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More marketers are placing creativity on the back foot and prioritising the collection of data using digital media. This has become as lucrative as oil.

Data important for marketing

Data helps marketers understand the granular details about the target market. This was almost impossible in the past with mass media.

Be that as it may, it’s important to maintain creativity when creating marketing messages. Creativity is what makes marketing campaigns exciting, and relatable to the target audience.

Creativity is about infusing the human element in marketing that evokes emotions. It’s also about understanding that the target audience are actual humans with emotions. These are some of the things that data cannot give.

But data is still important as it informs high-level strategy on the target market; demographic, psychographic, and geographic detail of the consumer.

Data must always compliment creativity

Understanding the target market is important and going on the ground in communities to understand socio-economic factors helps marketers look beyond the data.

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This also helps to know that behind the data there are actual humans. And because of this, marketers can curate messages which will resonate with their target audiences.

Over and above, data must always support creativity. After all, marketing is about mixing science and art. The science of marketing is about questioning, delving deep, and analysing the data.

Marketers must make the final decision with information deduced from that data as well as creative ideas that are relevant to people and their cultures. This way marketing campaigns become more about affecting impactful results and not just box-ticking exercises.