From crayons to calculators: the transition marketers have had to make--from creative souls to metrics mavens--has occurred quickly over a relatively short period of time. Here, a brief on recent developments and some tips for remaining competitive.(Marketing Transforms)

More of an art, less of a science has been a popular way to describe the marketing world's behaviors. That world is undergoing a sea change now, and marketers have had to put down their crayons and pick up calculators. The reasons? Finance departments breathe down their necks; accountability restrictions bind them to measurement software; demand for real numbers piles on from all sides. With industry sands shifting under their feet, how are marketers staying competitive?

The advent of high-speed Internet has probably been the greatest impetus for the changes marketers have experienced. Broadband penetration in U.S. households was at 5.5 percent in 2000, but this percentage has surged to almost 50 percent. The increase in broadband adoption has led to exponential growth in online consumer value: More people are making more buying decisions and purchases online, leaving marketers scrambling for new, innovative ways to catch customers' eyes and measure campaign success. The Web has contributed heavily to the demand for hard numbers as customer behavior is much more easy to quantify online than offline. Items like blogs, wikis, search engine optimization, social networking sites, and pay per click advertising did not exist 10 years ago, but now must become integrated into a marketer's lexicon and awareness. Liz Roche, managing partner at Customers Incorporated, says the most important thing for today's marketer to understand is that "the 'Web experiment' has succeeded and the Internet as a commercial tool is here to stay."

Suaad Sait, CEO of ReachForce, a provider of on-demand marketing automation products, began his career in marketing. "I used to be frustrated early on," he says. "I'd talk about wanting to quantify marketing spend and people looked at me like I had two heads." Just a few years later Sait moved to a different company and considerations had …