Heard it before, “they have Marketing down to a science”.

Having a process, and some rules to follow, doesn’t make it a science. It is still an art. A craft, in its best case.

I am an Engineer by training, and my career took me to do a lot of Marketing, so as someone who has one foot in each discipline, I have thought about this quite a bit.

In Marketing, we have rules of thumb, message open rates are typically in the order of two digits to one, and most salespeople like to have a 3:1 funnel to feel confident they’ll hit their number. These rules are constantly looked at and reviewed, adjusted for the product and the particular market, but that’s about where the science stops.

In Engineering, on the other side, most things are designed with a 10% safety range. Very rarely, twice as necessary. Very different from 10:1 or 3:1. Why the difference? Because engineers know exactly what is making something happen and in what proportion. The day someone can get to close 90% of their funnel, I will have to agree that they got it down to a science, in the meanwhile, Marketing and Sales are more of an art, the art of changing minds and making action happen.