Cross-Disciplinary Marketing and How to Benefit From it

April 27, 2021

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Being a marketer is not easy, contrary to what is believed. Marketers are asked to discern patterns for user behavior and find the most effective ways to communicate and promote the product or services in question to achieve a business goal.

This is easier said than done, and there are many challenges that you can face while you are attempting to do your job.

But, as it happens, there are certain skills and knowledge you can equip yourself with to make your job much less troublesome. This is where cross-disciplinary marketing comes into play. Let’s jump right in.

guy jumping on the beach

The importance of cross-disciplinary knowledge

Simply put, cross-disciplinary is relating to or representing more than one branch of knowledge. In other terms said person or topic can be described as interdisciplinary.

You might have come across a similar term, as well. And that word is eclectic. Does it ring a bell? Well, don’t fret. It is just a fancy term for what we have been referring to above. Now to the more serious stuff.

Have you ever had that colleague that seems to be more insightful than anyone? That coworker that has a way to solve what seems to be every problem the team faces? The coworker that seems like they are a corporate Hermione Granger?

That’s probably a cross-disciplinary individual.

Eclectic knowledge helps one navigate through problems that would seem otherwise impossible. Why? It’s because said knowledge combines modern applications of topics that already have the answer to your questions.

Have ever been asked to understand your customers’ user journey? Or how likely are customers to convert?

Journey to the mountains with snow

If the answer to that is yes, then you know it can get complicated. But, it does not have to be, and the next section will explain why.

Marketing Meets Data Science & Statistics

The answers to the above questions will become easier if you were familiar with probability trees and propensity modeling. Fancy, am I right?

Well, that’s what happens when marketing meets data science and statistics. The latter disciplines are a gold mine for every marketer that wants to take their skills to the next level. The marriage of the three disciplines is so famous that a whole role was born: Marketing Analyst.

Having a basic knowledge of statistics can help you with many tasks in your job as a marketer. Descriptive statistics can help you unveil insights about segments of your users. Regression analyses can help you build prediction models for the performance of your campaigns.

For instance, one can calculate the probability of a website visit leading to conversion using a propensity-to-spend model. This can be done using logistic regression. Such a model can help reveal insight into user purchase behavior which can be very rewarding.

couple celebrating a reward

Combining marketing, and statistics with data science would allow you to use advanced technologies such as machine learning and deep learning to build models that would help with predictions and yield better measurements for your campaigns.

Marketing Meets Computer Science

Know that we know what statistics and data science can help you solve as a marketer. Let’s go even deeper and try to solve more complicated problems, shall we?

As a marketer, the world of Search Engine Marketing should not be strange land for you. More precisely, the terrain of keyword research. Whether you are an ads specialist, media buyer, or SEO specialist keyword research will cross your professional path.

But, why are talking about this subject? Well, the reason for this is known to most marketers as “search intent”. If you do not know what that refers to it simply means interpreting the intent behind a user writing a query (a string of keywords) in a search engine.

looking for keyword on search engine

But, interpreting that intent is harder than it might seem. That is why it is time for marketing to meet computer science. One of the most interesting topics computer science covers is Natural Language Processing.

With AI and advanced machine learning algorithms, marketers can build models to pick on different signals to interpret the user intent behind the keywords used to access their website.

The use of advanced topics in computer science is definitely on the rise, and it’s time to catch up.

Marketing Meets Neuroscience

We have explored how data science and other fields can help marketers in their jobs.

But as much as one tries, predicting human emotions such as impulses is very difficult not unless someone can put the limbic system into very well-defined equations.

So, it’s time for marketers to look elsewhere. And so marketing meets neuroscience. This marriage yields a very riveting field known as neuromarketing.

Girl studying neuromarketing next to a river

Neuromarketing is a combination of qualitative research methods, neuroscience, and psychology to help marketers understand consumer behavior. In other terms, why does make people buy a product?

How can we use marketing to better build marketing campaigns for awareness? What can we do to influence purchase decisions across funnels better? How can use concepts such as utility and tools such as the utility function to better design research experiments for our products?

All those questions and more will be easier answered if you are equipped with neuromarketing knowledge.

You can even take this knowledge further by combining it with behavioral economics to build mathematical models. A good example of this would be how can we better explain the branding behind luxurious products.

Interesting right? Well, that’s what you would be as a cross-disciplinary marketer.

Conclusion

Cross-disciplinary knowledge is the key for professionals that want to have an interesting career. Think of this as your version of Batman’s utility belt.

Cross-disciplinary knowledge is your version of Batman’s utility belt.

The more topics you know, the more tools you can use in problem-solving, and the more complex questions you can answer.

Eliminating the guessing game from your marketing efforts, and building autonomous systems to help you with data-driven marketing efforts will yield magnificent results.

Marketing is growing both as an industry and as a discipline and the new generation of marketers will be a generating of data-driven individuals. In the end, your eclectic knowledge will help you extract, transform, load, and visualize the right data, at the right time for the most impact.

Happy marketing!

About the author

Aziz Dhaouadi is a Marketing Specialist working in the ad tech industry. He is passionate about computer science and the fascinating world of physics. He is an advocate of marrying theory with practice and using cross-disciplinary knowledge for complex problem-solving.

Aziz Dhaouadi

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