Marketing science becomes a product feature when a practitioner’s question gets tested against research and built into the software. This works because a feedback loop between analysts and academics turns one-off problems into automatic fixes going forward. Without that loop, platforms stay static, and every client hits problems a smarter, research-backed system would have already caught. This video explains how blending research with client experience keeps a platform improving continuously.
Why Marketing Science Only Becomes a Product Feature Through a Feedback Loop
Marketing science only becomes a product feature through a feedback loop, because a question that starts as one practitioner’s hunch has to be tested against real academic research before it’s worth building permanently into the software. In this video, Jon Lorenzini, Chief Marketing Science Officer at LiftLab, describes direct access to top marketing academics as one of the best parts of the job: a practitioner question about something odd in the data or models gets raised, worked through with researchers, and if it turns out to affect enough clients, gets built into the product so that specific problem never has to be solved manually again.
Lorenzini frames this as a shift in the balance of the business, where the consulting side is shrinking as the product side absorbs more of that expertise. It also changes how conclusions get defended: instead of relying on personal experience alone, product decisions now come with citations to the academic research behind them. Clients benefit from the same loop, since a problem one client brings to LiftLab and helps solve becomes a fix that’s already built in for every client who hits it next.
In this video, you’ll learn:
How LiftLab bridges the gap between academic theory and software application
Why iterative feedback cycles are critical for building robust SaaS tools
How client-specific challenges contribute to broader product innovation
The value of using academic citations to validate product decision-making
How automation helps streamline complex marketing problem-solving for users
TIME STAMPFull Video Transcript: Turning Marketing Science Into Product Features Explained
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Jon Lorenzini explains how the company turns academic marketing science and client problems into permanent product features.
[0:00 – 0:55] Access to Expert Knowledge
That actually is a good point, and another reason why I like working at LiftLab is because there is no way that I would have access to all the people that I have access to here. Some of the most brilliant minds in marketing were in that advisory meeting, and with this I get to, as a practitioner, ask some of the top academics in their field questions about the day-to-day. Now what’s fun about this is our questions are never the same. When we start with a question we’re like, “Hey, this is what I’m thinking about. Here’s something that might be messing up our results or models, do you want to take a look at it?” And then we work through it and then we say, “This is really good, and this is impacting a lot of our clients, let’s just make it part of the product.” And then that problem never becomes a problem again. Designing an engine from the bottom up, right? And we say, “Okay, now we have a new problem,” this is the new problem. And we’ve gone through this cycle so many times that so many of these problems are now built by default into the product.
[0:55 – 1:41] Evolution from Consulting to Product
I think what’s really nice about that is we’re creating a better SaaS product through the consultant piece of us, but the consultant side is shrinking and the product side is growing, in a way where we could say the net knowledge of all our advisers is informing the product through us and through our customer needs. And because of that, first, I learn a ton. Second, everything that I think is true is now white papered, where I could say, instead of, “No, I know this because I’ve done this a million times,” then I go, “No, I know this because, yes, I’ve done it a million times, but here’s all the citations of the white papers according to academia.” So you’re not just arguing with me, you’re arguing with all these experts. I think that’s really fun from a rhetorical perspective.
[1:42 – 2:12] Collaborative Innovation
But I also think that building it into the product allows us to make something even better that they could even point to and say, “Here was my mark, here was my research that worked its way into LiftLab.” And we have clients who have that too, where they go, “This was my problem that is now solved, and that is now part of our product.” So if any other clients have that problem, it’s solved because of me. And I think that’s cool, because the product is a combination of the experts, ourselves, and our clients all merging the problems together in a way that is automated.
Key Lessons: Turning Marketing Science Research Into Automated Product Features
Product evolution: The consulting side of the business informs the product side, leading to a shrinking dependency on manual services and a growing, more powerful software engine.
Evidence-based design: Every product decision is supported by academic research, moving the conversation from personal opinion to verifiable scientific evidence.
Collaborative problem solving: Client issues become the catalyst for new features, ensuring that the platform solves relevant problems for the entire user base.
Automated scaling: By merging expert knowledge with client experience, the platform creates an automated system that perpetually improves its diagnostic capabilities.
