Marketing Through The Mathematics Lens: A Journey Into Marketing Deltas

“Mathematics” can be a scary word for many folks.

For those that find the field of Mathematics to be a bit scary, it can conjure painful memories of anxiety-ridden days in a grade school or high school classroom.

Terms like multiplication, division, fractions, products and quotients can make even the most educated people I know a bit squeamish.

To me, however, Mathematics was always a beacon – a guiding light, a north star – that revealed the true inner workings of how things worked.

I loved math so much I quietly changed my major while I was in college (from engineering) to pursue the higher, more advanced levels of my college’s curriculum.

Growing up on a small farm in Wisconsin, Mathematics wasn’t the typical path for a farm boy looking to make his way in the world.

And, as it turns out, a career in Mathematics wasn’t part of the career plan either – at least not directly, or immediately apparent after college.

The Digital Marketing Pivot

In a very long (and more… complicated) story that I may share one day, a few years after college I found myself in the digital marketing world – building WordPress websites, doing search engine optimization, logo & design work, blogging and a bit of digital PR for small businesses and entrepreneurial folks.

Going along with the complicated story I mentioned above, the work was done out of necessity (again, a very long story) — many of the folks I worked with lacked the resources or had the technical skills to perform a lot of the work I did, so I naturally filled the gaps for them.

Learning (and learning fast) became the norm in my life (actually that’s still largely the norm to this day).

Slowly, over time, I had assembled a very nice portfolio of small business clients that eventually lead to the creation of Small Business Sidekick.

Watching small businesses grow through digital marketing was an amazing thing to watch – they were – and still are – very much my heroes (thus, the “Sidekick” was born) as I complemented their hard offline work with my digital marketing skills (especially through SEO – more on that below).

Every year I got a little sharper, a little more savvy in the world of the digital marketing and, in particular search marketing – very small changes, applied over time that slowly accumulated in my own way, my own process of doing things online for my clients.

Enter Mathematics.

A Mathematics Degree Doesn’t Make One Smart

When I tell folks I have a degree in mathematics, they often think I can add or multiply large numbers in my head — my answer to that?

Use a calculator. (I would do the same.)

There are a lot of fine people in this world with much higher processing power than mine that can do those calculations in their heads – but I’m not one of them.

Many folks might call those people and those with a degree in math smart. To some degree, it can, but I wouldn’t say that directly.

There are many kinds of smart.

I’ve seen so many small business owners, with no formal college degree or any kind of advanced education massively succeed where other “smart” people would often (and very often) fail.

Smart, you see, comes in many flavors.

No, when they handed me my degree in mathematics, they didn’t proclaim me the “smartest” person your friends now know.

What they did tell me with that degree was much more important than being the “smartest” person in the room:

“A mathematics degree doesn’t prove you’re smart – it proves you can learn anything.”

And so I did.

Hidden Deltas

Working for so long in the digital marketing space – actively doing the work (getting my hands dirty, so to speak) – it allowed me to notice and learn little things other folks that may have advanced a bit further in their careers may not have.

Those little things turn out to be much, much larger when drawing connections to the world of Mathematics.

And so the little, hidden Deltas revealed themselves, over time.

What Are Hidden Deltas?

I had various names for “Hidden Deltas” over the years — as mentioned above, more technical Mathematical terms can scare folks away, so I settled on a combination of words that mark it’s true nature, in plain words.

The “delta” (δ) symbol has many meanings across various domains – one of which being a very small change or difference, over time.

I believe many small businesses can reach their full potential by quietly applying a few small changes (through their delta set), over time, to their digital marketing activities and infrastructure.

These changes often are extremely challenging to find, hidden and obscured in the shadows of a relentlessly evolving digital landscape – which can be overwhelming and difficult to find for any small business owners.

As you’ll see in future blog posts, leveraging Mathematics you can find “hidden deltas” in every foundational structure of digital marketing – branding, websites, content, search & social, paid channel management and, near to my heart, search engine optimization (where I first found my “shadow deltas”).

For now, if you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur reading this (including if you’re a current client), I hope this won’t only be a place where you pick up some digital marketing ideas, but also a place where you can turn those painful math memories into leverage for starting, building, improving and growing your business in 2025.