The following is an excerpt from The 7 Keys to Marketing Genius by Michael Daehn

Since I just used the faith term and this is a down-to-earth treatise on the science of marketing, allow me to elaborate. First of all, every decision we make is based on an element of faith. Nothing in life is certain, even science tells us that. I cannot prove beyond a doubt that you are reading this book right now, and neither can you. There are two kinds of faith: reasonable and unreasonable.

Reasonable faith is based on a certain amount of evidence and information while unreasonable faith is based on little or no information. Unreasonable faith also is the kind of faith that goes against the evidence. Here is an example to illustrate the point. Let us say I am going to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in my car. I have a large gas tank and should be able to make the trip on half a tank. If I have not filled my tank in a week and my fuel gauge says empty and the little yellow light is on but I have faith I can make it to Las Vegas, then I am acting on an unreasonable faith. If on the other hand, I go to the gas station, put the nozzle in the tank, watch the numbers roll on the pump, pay my $37 for gas, get in the car and see the needle go up to full and the yellow light go off, then I am acting on a reasonable faith that I can make it to Las Vegas. In either case, I am still acting on faith that I have enough gas to make it to Las Vegas, but in the latter scenario my faith is based on reason and evidence.

The point of this philosophy lesson is to communicate that your marketing decisions should be based on reason. You will never have the exhaustive knowledge necessary to guarantee success. Some information may even be skewed by the methods used to obtain the results. Nevertheless, you must have some evidence upon which to base your decisions. This is the difference between reasonable and unreasonable marketing decisions. Get as much information as possible and then use the information wisely to implement changes.