If you have a job in marketing, chances are very good you are a right brainer, often making good decisions using experience and gut instinct as your guide. It couldn’t be otherwise in a creative discipline like marketing. Or could it?
Recently I came across an infographic about the difference between left-brain and right-brain marketers, and how one makes great use of data and the other of creativity, and outlines the results to be expected from a marketer depending on which side of the brain outmatched the other at birth. The left-brain marketer uses facts and data to move forward in a very methodical way, while the right-brain marketer uses imagination without – it seems – much business acumen (editor’s note: ouch!).
The wealth and abundance of valuable audience intelligence available to marketers through their own digital properties as well as from media partners has triggered a seismic shift in how marketers and the business determine how to move forward. Districted by this shiny new object, we marketers can easily lose sight of the value of bringing a message to life for our audience. So this newfound love of intelligence can easily overshadow the right brain. The net result is that you probably have a marketing team of smart people duking it out, left versus right, in the match of the century.
But what if the match were a draw, and both kinds of smart put down the gloves? Success – and the resulting ROI – will go directly to marketers who facilitate effective collaboration between both left-brain and right-brain thinkers. The standouts will be those who balance the use of both hemispheres of their own brains, in order to produce compelling words and images and deliver them using actionable, data-driven insights.
Then, the art of persuasion will transform into a beautiful science.
Originally published on TechTarget's Mktr2Mktr Blog.