What scientists know that marketers don't

This newsletter comes from the hosts of The Marketing Architects, a research-first show answering your biggest marketing questions. Find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!

 

This week, we're diving deep into the uncomfortable truths about how brands actually grow with Dale Harrison, a physicist-turned-marketer who's spent decades studying the mathematical realities behind market share and consumer behavior. 

—Elena  

 

Share of voice correlates almost perfectly with share of market.   

Research spanning from the 1960s to today shows an almost perfect linear correlation between how many people you reach and how much market share you capture. More reach equals more buyers, period. 

 

The mathematical reality of brand growth                     

Most marketing growth strategies are built on fundamentally flawed assumptions about how consumers behave. Dale Harrison breaks down the science: 

1. Purchase frequency is fixed. Individual consumers have stable buying patterns that rarely change. You can't convince someone to buy 10 boxes of detergent when they only need one.  
   
2. Brand loyalty is a myth. Consumers choose from a "repertoire" of brands based on relatively fixed preferences, not rigid loyalty to a single option. 
   
3. Reach trumps targeting. What matters isn't avoiding "waste" but what you pay per future buyer reached. Better to reach many people at a low cost than hyper-target at a high cost. 
   
4. Growth comes from two sources. You either grab market share from competitors (extremely difficult) or ride the wave of organic category growth (requires perfect timing). 
   
5. Market share rarely moves. Across thousands of product categories, relative market share stays remarkably stable. When it does shift, it takes years or decades. 

The NBD-Dirichlet model, based on 25 years of consumer purchase data, proves these patterns hold across B2B and B2C markets alike. Most hypergrowth stories have little to do with brilliant marketing and everything to do with being first in a rapidly expanding category. 

Listen in on our discussion.

 

“How Marketing Creates Revenue”          

Dale Harrison's LinkedIn article walks through the economics of a B2B startup, showing how marketing acts as a non-linear multiplier of business functions rather than a direct revenue driver.  

Read the article.

 

 

Why data always wins.               

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." 

— Richard Feynman, Physicist