Marketing is Part Science & Part Art: Sustainability Requires Investment and Experimentation in Both

Sustainability in Marketing Requires Investment and Experimentation in Both Art & Science

I wrote the first "When Everybody Clicks: Sustainable Digital Marketing" to answer a question—what makes client-vendor marketing relationships sustainable over time?

Marketing is complex—part science, part art. It encompasses business strategy, audience research, content strategy, analytics, SEO, product development, creative work, customer relationship management, and more.

In the second iteration, “When Everybody Clicks: Sustainable Digital Marketing Galvanizing People, Data, & Strategy for a Purpose". I've narrowed my focus from big brands to mission-driven organizations. Healthcare is frequently in my examples because I spent eight and a half years as a digital marketer in that sector, but I've also interviewed people from fashion, journalism, technology, education, sports, critical communications, and retail—all brands committed to serving their customers.

Marketing has a reputation problem—we define it differently and measure success differently, depending on where we sit.

This disconnect creates challenges for long-term relationships necessary for marketing success. Smart people across marketing disciplines, best-in-class tools, training, clearly defined processes, and data analysis—all of these build value for brands and the people they employ. But misaligned expectations undermine everything. It's not just helpful, but necessary to create and nurture a culture of shared definitions and alignment on what success looks like.

Thirteen years ago, when I wrote the first book, emotional intelligence research showed that technical knowledge accounts for only 15% of success. People skills account for up to 85%. Emotional intelligence is still the number one predictor of workplace performance according to TalentSmart EQ research. That EQ and judgement is more important now than ever. It's an important differentiation between artificial and human intelligence.

In our work, we prize speed. We "move fast and break things." But we sometimes underinvest in the power of culture, in soft skills and in our ability to create and sustain relationships in the organizational systems that support them. Culture matters, too. As Simon Sinek has documented for decades, a brand's culture and purpose have enormous implications for employees, and customers.

When we better understand our gaps in emotional and technical intelligence as followers and as leaders, we can work smarter, better, and faster. When we build trust with employees and customers grounded in a shared belief in why the service or product is special, the entire system thrives.

Every interview and every chapter brought new insights into what makes business sustainable.

These chapters show how smart marketers create culture, think creatively, plan strategically, and invest consistently to nurture better relationships with customers. This book is for employees, consultants, agencies, CMOs, and businesses of all sizes — including teams inside large companies doing mission-driven work. It illustrates how marketers think about goals and objectives, strategies and tactics. It shows how good marketing can solve big problems.

The last couple of years have brought challenges for marketers. Many writers, coders, and marketers have lost jobs as companies over-rely on AI and reassess marketing investment.  If technology has taught us anything it’s that early adopters will dive in, learn, and share what they learn, and make us all better.

This isn't the first time technology has forced this kind of reckoning. In 1996 the burgeoning internet challenged us to think differently. Sustainability was hard to come by. Companies adapted, grew, changed, and were sometimes lost because of the challenges the internet presented. It also presented so much opportunity. We're at another interesting business- and career-defining time. What hasn't changed is our need to be curious, brave, flexible, and collaborative.

Find your way by finding your people.

I have found my people through interviews, work, conferences, and communities on social platforms like LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter — the culture shifted even more than the name), and Reddit. We may shift to Substack or TikTok or BlueSky. We engage with the platforms that make space for the culture and community we're searching for. We'll invest our time and thinking into platforms that best help us search with our heads and our hearts. That searching has changed with Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, CoPilot, and others. It isn't a substitute for your curiosity. That curiosity continues to help us prepare for the shifts in our thinking and beliefs.

The shift matters: the machine can make the search experience better AND put the end user at the center.

The learning matters: the machine can make your intelligence faster and more expansive, AND put the learner at the center,

I'm grateful to every person I interviewed, every person who taught me, every person who has invested in me, and the wonderfully wise communities we've built along the way. Marketing and Technology change. Thank you to the people who have forged a path to sustainability in the midst of so much change.

This book is a love letter to all of you. I hope you enjoy the interviews and insights.