Scott Brinker

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 …

2 human strengths that are also 2 data weaknesses Continue Reading »

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 …

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

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 …

Ripples from software, to marketing, to manufacturing Continue Reading »

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 …

14 rules for data-driven, not data-deluded, marketing Continue Reading »

Front row to the merging of marketing and technology

September 9, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

Bob Lord and Ray Velez, respectively the CEO and CTO of digital agency Razorfish, teamed up to write a book on the intertwining of marketing and technology. It’s called Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology. How could I not love such a book? Actually, Bob Lord is now the former CEO of Razorfish. He was recruited away for the job of CEO of AOL Networks earlier this summer by Tim Armstrong. …

Front row to the merging of marketing and technology Continue Reading »

Strategic data vs. data theater in data-driven marketing

September 2, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Let’s face it: we’re swimming in a sea of essentially infinite data at this point. In a recent Teradata report, “lack of needed data” was cited as the least common obstacle to data driven-marketing. Only 22% of the marketers surveyed said that’s what held them back. The most common obstacle? “Lack of process to bring insights into decision-making.” Data may be marketing’s most underutilized asset, but it’s hardly its most scarce. Teradata honed in the …

Strategic data vs. data theater in data-driven marketing Continue Reading »

Conquering the challenges of social media at scale

August 29, 2013 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

“Marketing infrastructure.” Not too many years ago, that might have been nominated as an oxymoron, right up there with a deafening silence, sweet sorrow, and jumbo shrimp. But now, that’s where some of the most interesting developments in marketing are happening. Marketing operations is on the rise. Process is “the new black” in data-driven marketing. Even social media marketing, when it’s tackled at scale, is in many ways an infrastructure challenge. It’s one thing when …

Conquering the challenges of social media at scale Continue Reading »

Data is the most underutilized asset in marketing

August 27, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

According to a new study on data-driven marketing by Teradata Applications (the artists formerly known as Aprimo), 45% of marketers believe that data is the most underutilized asset in the marketing organization. Most underutilized. That’s throwing down the gauntlet. And indeed, 78% of the marketers surveyed say that they feel pressure to become more data-driven. The research, conducted with more than 2,200 marketers at companies with $100 million or more in revenue, revealed a number …

Data is the most underutilized asset in marketing Continue Reading »

How ReadyTalk successfully adopted agile marketing

August 22, 2013 / Agile Marketing / By Scott Brinker / 5 Comments

As the clockspeed of marketing continues to accelerate, more and more marketers are exploring agile marketing — the application of agile management techniques in the marketing department — as a way to adapt to this new environment. But agile marketing is not yet a textbook methodology. While agile processes have been well developed in software engineering circles over the past two decades, the application of them to marketing is relatively new. And while there are …

How ReadyTalk successfully adopted agile marketing Continue Reading »

ReadyTalk's Agile Marketing Scrum-ban Board

3 important lessons for marketers from Google’s CIO

August 21, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

You can imagine that being the CIO at Google could be a pretty tough gig. The whole company is teeming with super smart engineers. A large number of them are under 30 millennials who are famously opinionated. The culture encourages this and thrives on independent initiatives. And experimental techno-Petri dishes surely sprout around every corner. You try to provide IT that makes all those folks happy. So I was fascinated to read a great interview …

3 important lessons for marketers from Google’s CIO Continue Reading »