Creatalytics by Matthew Burgess

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. And of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Born on the same day, same year. Who knew? Thanks NPR.

Seems like a fitting day to introduce a concept that has guided much of my thinking, something that is key to what I’m writing about on the Creatalytics blog.

Darwinian Marketing is the term I use for an approach that involves applying the framework of natural selection to systems that test website variations, ad copy variations, conversion scheme variations, and much more in a manner that allows an evolutionary process to occur and ensures that the strongest survive and an evolve.

On the very last page of The Origin of Species, Darwin writes:

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

There is no simpler, yet more important concept, in understanding nature. And this concept can inform our understanding of many things far beyond natural science: complexity, emergence, economic systems, and yes, data-driven performance marketing.

It provides the key insights that allow us to bring analytics and creative thinking together in a way that propels  our online marketing efforts.

In my posts thus far, especially in my post “K.I.S.S., my ass,” I’ve started talking about how a savvy Internet marketer can and should feel confident embracing complexity, in building systems that allow them to learn lessons and take action based on lots of data.

I’ve written that “keeping it simple” in the sense of “less is more” is no longer necessary to get actionable knowledge out of data, because if you’re smart in building your systems, processes, approaches, and tools, you won’t need “fewer” to have simple.

Rather, if built correctly, simplicity—and elegance—will emerge from complexity.

For me, a key part of this approach is in understanding how the lessons of natural selection apply to this work. Creative iteration, copy fidelity, periodic mutation, and either a punctuated or gradual evolution. Conversion path optimization as ecosystem.  

Darwinian Marketing.

More to come on this concept. Stay tuned.

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Data Driven Marketing by Matthew Burgess