Scott Brinker

Digital is easy. Try A/B testing in the real world.

October 31, 2013 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

If I was going to recommend one book for an executive to read about the power of controlled experiments in business, it would be Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi. It’s impossible to read this book and not walk away enthused about the potential of testing and experimentation. Jim is the founder and chairman of Applied Predictive Technologies (APT), which bills itself as the world’s largest, purely …

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The emerging third-party era of marketing automation

October 29, 2013 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 34 Comments

Will marketing technology consolidate into a handful of behemoth super-platforms? Or will it continue to diversify with more innovative new software? My theory on marketing technology consolidation vs. diversification has been both. I believe that a set of “backbone” platforms will serve as the foundation of marketing’s technology infrastructure, but they will promote open APIs and robust third-party developer communities. Marketers will have the best of both worlds: a coordinating platform for standardized data and …

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Marketing Automation Third-Party Software

CEOs look toward disruptive technology more than CMOs

October 18, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

CEOs have come to recognize, more than ever, that disruptive technology poses the single biggest existential threat to the future of their businesses. Or, on the optimistic side of that coin, it promises tremendous opportunity for them to capture new ground. IBM recently released their latest global C-suite study — The Customer-activated Enterprise — and I highly recommend downloading it. Their research was conducted by interviewing over 4,183 C-level executives from across 70 countries and …

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This CMO wrote the book on big data marketing, literally

October 14, 2013 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

As marketers, we have more data at our disposal now than our predecessors could have imagined in their wildest dreams. However, this bounty of data is not without challenges. Two recent posts I wrote on these challenge — data is the most underutilized asset in marketing and strategic data vs. data theater — were inspired by some excellent research on data-driven marketing conducted by Teradata Applications (formerly known as Aprimo). In discussing their report with …

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10 reasons why marketing nerds are so darn lovable

October 9, 2013 / Other / By Scott Brinker / 10 Comments

Lattice Engines was kind enough to include me in a recent list of their favorite marketing nerds. I’m certainly honored by the esteemed company they put me in, with true tech-savvy marketing wizards such as Ann Handley, Mike Volpe, Christopher Penn, David Raab, Joe Chernov, and many others whom I admire. But I have to admit, I find the label flattering unto itself. When I was growing up, “nerd” wasn’t usually a complimentary label. But …

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Debunking 3 myths of agile marketing

October 7, 2013 / Agile Marketing / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

Agile marketing continues to grow in popularity. Why? The old “waterfall” approach to marketing planning and execution simply can’t keep pace with the speed at which prospects (and competitors) can move in the superconductive digital world. In a Forrester report earlier this year, from which the graph below was excerpted, analyst Laura Ramos wrote, “The traditional annual planning routine is ripe for extinction, as 69% of our B2B marketing leaders say that conditions change too …

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2 human strengths that are also 2 data weaknesses

October 1, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

Two of the greatest strengths of the human mind in marketing: Our ability to detect patterns from imperfect information. Our ability to tell stories that resonate and spread. Ironically, these are also two of our biggest weaknesses in data-driven marketing I’m presenting today at DemandCon on a panel about effective marketing management with data. The official title of the session is “measuring marketing impact.” Yet while I am firm believer in the power of data …

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Fire the funnel — 5 stages of the real buyer’s journey

September 22, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 22 Comments

The funnel model of marketing and sales doesn’t reflect reality very well. We know this. Buyers don’t proceed in lock-step fashion down a pipeline. They never did, actually. But the wide-ranging journeys of exploration that buyers can take today on the web have only exacerbated the disparity between the model and reality. This more realistic diagram of the “funnel” by Lori Wizdo of Forrester Research brilliantly illustrates that point. The real funnel doesn’t look like …

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Ripples from software, to marketing, to manufacturing

September 17, 2013 / Marketing Management, Uncategorized / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

We can learn a lot by watching how a revolution moves from one profession to the next. When it comes to rapid prototyping and adaptive development, as a result of digital technologies, the software industry naturally led the way. The very technology they invented helped change the way they work. So, while the early days of software engineering were long cycle projects — waterfall project management at its grandest scale, often spanning a year or …

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14 rules for data-driven, not data-deluded, marketing

September 13, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 6 Comments

We’re now in the crossfire of a peaking hype cycle for big data and its inevitable backlash. One marketer the other night was yelling on Twitter, “Big Data People need to GET OFF MY LAWN.” I confess, I empathize with his frustration. Of course, I believe that data — the right data, used in the right ways — is immensely powerful in modern marketing. As I wrote in a post about pragmatic marketing, “Relying solely …

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