Quants, Quals, Snuggies and Internet Marketing
What do you hope to accomplish with your internet marketing campaign? In what time frame? Are you looking for short-term profits with little persistency, similar to what a direct marketing campaign such as an infomercial might generate? Sell someone something and sell it soon? Or are you looking to build a long-term presence with attendant relationships and a slower time to profits? The internet offers the potential to do both with the quant <----> qual continuum.
At one end of the continuum, dominated by quantitative analysts (quants), internet marketing can be effectively used for pure direct marketing (short-term profits). And at the other end, dominated by qualitative specialists, it can be designed for pure branding (relationship building). Discussing these two as mutually exclusive is simplistic (we want to avoid dichotomous thinking, right?) and in most cases you will optimize your marketing results by deploying your marketing budget at a point toward the middle of the continuum.
In general terms, quants are about numbers and quals are about ideas.
Quants want to measure things. But what to measure? Do you remember when “impressions” were considered the Holy Grail? Is it click-throughs? Time spent on a site? Conversion rate? How about “eyeballs’?
But an emphasis on quantitative analysis does work well for direct marketing. Just ask the Snuggies folks. If your goal is to sell a product immediately (even one that makes your customers look like a laid back satanic cult), then there will be more emphasis on the quantitative component as you measure spends and sales over the short term.
However, if you want to build the cult, as opposed to just selling them their robes, it becomes a challenge of building brand, a long term process. And that requires quals using a qualitative process that determines strategies and tactics. Skills required include: creativity, deductive & inductive thinking and synthesis, to name a few. And then, once underway, quantitative analysis is a powerful tool to let us know how we’re doing.
A group of statisticians (quants) and a party of case study aficionados (quals) found theselves on a train traveling to the same professional meeting. The quals, all of whom had tickets, observed that the quants had only one ticket for their whole group.
“How can you all travel on one ticket”? asked a qual.
“We have our methods,” replied a quant.
Later, when the conductor came to punch tickets, all the quants quickly slipped behind the door of the toilet. When the conductor knocked on the door, the heaad quant slipped their one ticket under the door, thoroughly fooling the conductor.
On their return from the conference, the two groups again found themselves on the same train. The qualitative researchers, having learned from the quants, had schemed to share a single ticket. They were chagrined, however, to learn that this time the statisticians had boarded with no tickets.
“We know how you traveled together with one ticket,” revealed a qual, “but how can you possible get away with no tickets?”
“We have ever more sophisticated methods,” replied a quant.
Later, when the conductor approached, all the quals crowded into the toilet. The head statistician followed them and knocked authoritatively on the door. The quals slipped their one and only ticket under the door. The head quant took the ticket and joined the other quants in a different toilet. The quals were subsequently discovered without tickets, publicly humiliated, and tossed off the train at its next stop.
(as told in Utilization-Focused Evaluation by Michael Quinn Patton)
In marketing, quals design it and quants measure it. They represent very different skill sets and attract different personality types. And there is often a rivalry between the two (I can’t get the image out of my mind of quants on one side in their burgundy Snuggies battling the quals on the other in their blue Snuggies).
But the power is to combine the strengths of both. Use the qualitative process to create and design strategies and tactics and to use the quantitative process to track and measure. There are plenty of Snuggies for everyone.
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My grandmother bought me a six-pack of canned generic iced tea for a care package when i was in college. It was so bad, I wouldn’t have gotten a dog to drink it. But a neighbor of mine came down the hall to visit and asked about the tea. I told him how bad it was. He asked to try it. I gave him the rest of the can. He gulped it and then shouted, “oh wow, that was terrible.” I told him I told him so and then he goes, “Wow, can I have another?” He drank the six pack in ten minutes. I asked him why and he went, “It was so terrible I HAD to have it.”
Point being: Quant, Qual, Snuggie was gonna sell. No tests or metrics could have seen it coming. Pet Rocks a-plenty.
Said The Sharper Image Review on July 6th, 2009 at 11:20 am