Marketing Management

Ever see the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon? Great story about the Apollo moon missions. I’m pretty sure it was in one of those episodes that I most remember the impactful difference between “unit tests” and “system tests.” Getting people on the moon required a huge number of different component technologies, many each breakthrough innovations on their own. But success depended on how well the entire system worked. All those components needed to …

Tech stacks are still large, but orchestration can make all the difference Continue Reading »

2023 will be a fascinating but challenging year for marketing. Macroeconomic headwinds are colliding with rising customer expectations for better digital experiences. Martech stacks are consolidating under economic pressure. Yet at the same time, major innovations with generative AI, first-party/second-party data, ecosystem strategies, and fragmenting media channels are driving important changes to marketing’s digital capabilities. On December 6 at 11am EST — 5pm CET and 8am PT — Frans Riemersma and I will give the …

What to expect in martech in 2023 and how to harness it to your advantage Continue Reading »

tl;dr — The State of Partner Ops and Programs is a “must read” report for martech. A month ago, I wrote about how channel, partner, and ecosystem tech is one of the hottest categories in martech today. As businesses become increasingly interwoven with each other in serving customers in a digital world — where nearly everything can be adjacent to everything else — a whole wave of new opportunities for innovation are opening up. The …

Partner Ops: The forgotten ops that’s suddenly thriving in the ecosystem era Continue Reading »

Apologies for the lull in posting. I took a long, much-needed family vacation — almost entirely digital-free. I’m now back in the saddle, recharged and reenergized about all that’s happening in martech. With a huge backlog of cool things to share with you. Here’s the first… Enterprise automation company Workato (disclosure: I’m an advisor to them) recently released their 2022 Work Automation Index. It’s not a survey, but rather the aggregated data from 900 of …

What are we automating in marketing and martech in 2022, and who is automating it? Continue Reading »

Half of martech and marketing ops professionals received a promotion in the past year. More accurately, half of the 426 respondents to our 2022 Martech Career Survey, run in collaboration with the team at MarTech.org, reported receiving a promotion within the past 12 months. But still, that’s impressive, and speaks to the incredible growth and demand for talent in this field. Overall, salaries grew 23% since the last time we surveyed them in 2019. These …

The latest data on martech and marketing ops careers, and an ode to spreadsheets Continue Reading »

“One of the things that doesn’t get talked about as much as it should in martech is the gap between the technology that is installed and the skills that exist in the organization.” In a recent interview I had with Anita Brearton, CEO of CabinetM, this was one of the points she was most animated about. “Stack utilization is a huge issue. You build these big, complex stacks — are you getting your money’s worth? …

The real build vs. buy question in martech is around talent, not technology Continue Reading »

There’s a day for everything. Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day. Sword Swallowers Day. No Pants Day. But there’s no official day on the calendar to acknowledge and celebrate the martech profession and all the wonderful, talented people who work in it. Not to take anything away from National Artichoke Day, but I think marketing technology and operations pros are far more deserving of recognition than those thorny, bitter greens. So let’s rectify that. Frans Riemersma of …

#MartechDay: The 2022 Martech Landscape, State of Martech Report, Stackies, and more Continue Reading »

Bain & Company recently conducted a martech survey with 100 major consumer products companies. They evaluated these companies’ maturity on 30 different martech capabilities, including enablers such as martech product management and governance practices. They identified the top 12% of those companies as “leaders” in their martech capabilities and the bottom 19% as “laggards.” You will hopefully not be surprised to learn that the leaders have mostly gained market share in the past couple of …

It’s not the size of your martech stack, it’s your range of use cases Continue Reading »

As with crime and politics, if you want to reveal the real plot in marketing’s evolution, follow where the money is going. Hmm. That’s probably not the most flattering of metaphors. Okay, scratch that image. But it is why I always look forward to Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey report. Allocation of budget is a CMO’s way of “voting with their wallet” for what they think is most important. Grab a copy of The State …

Follow the money: CMO budgets for martech and marketing operations Continue Reading »

Surveys are nice, but they have their limitations. They’re swayed by who participates (selection bias) and the way those participants interpret your questions in their own minds — which varies wildly for reasons a psychologist would be best suited to explain. The results can be directionally useful, but they’re not “facts.” The ground truth is what people actually do, not what they say they do. So I was thrilled to see the new Work Automation …

What are we automating in marketing and sales? A lot Continue Reading »