Is marketing still a numbers game?

"Marketing is much more of statistics than creativity. It's a numbers game." Yea, yea I admit it, I used this statement and, to be honest, believed in it.
On Aug 2009, after I got back from my maternity leave that lasted no more and no less but 1 year and 3 months (!!!), I realized that perhaps the rules have changed.
Don't get me wrong, I still think that statistics play a huge role in marketing success (and where not?!) but its' measurement metrics turned out to be a whole new story.
Everywhere I turn, I hear the same thing: "In today's world of 'social media' - It's all about quality, not quantity! It's all about research! You need to become an industry expert/consultant for you prospects, prior trying to sell them something! You need to show what value your company/solution/service can bring to the prospect's table!" yada-yada-yada... But what on earth did we do before the era of social media? Just sent our message to thousands, hundreds, millions of prospects with no research on their needs/challenges and what they can possibly be interested in? No, we did the research. We used focus groups. We differentiated our DB by certain criteria and adjusted the message to be a trigger for that particular group. And so on and so forth. I'm not trying to be provocative by saying what I've said. I want to understand. Basically, now, in this world of social media, we do the same things we did before, but we have better tools to reach the prospects. To be more specific: we have the tools to reach the prospects in the 'places' where they actually are and where they actually are more open (by default) to be engaged in the conversation, discussion etc. It's all good, but going back to the main question of this post: is marketing still a numbers game? I would say yes. Prospects, even if you think that becoming a sort of free consultant to them (and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, on the contrary!), understands very well that at some point they will be sold at.
Of course the effort is made by marketing team should be put on the scales vs. the ROMI, and the main challenge here is to make it at least an equation: effort=ROMI,or, and better, effort < ROMI (I can dream, can't I? ;-) ). I guess what I'm trying to say is that we still have to watch the numbers in terms of quantity. Naturally, this will take much more effort than ever to fill out a really good pipeline of quality prospects. But in this case I think that it will be worth it.
To finalize my thoughts: marketing has become more quality oriented than before. But in order to maintain the pipeline of quality prospects, the quantity should not be neglected. How this can be done? I think eventually it will come to the point that perhaps it’s better to have a small team of, say, marketing managers, who can think, rather than an army of telemarketers, who follow the script (The knowing will understand © )

By J.G.