Scott Brinker

5 ways to make stats in content marketing more credible

May 2, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 7 Comments

As marketers, we want to be better consumers of data. Presented with data and its analysis, we want to be able to judge its accuracy and relevance to our decision making. We want to gauge its ambiguity and uncertainty, even though on the surface we’re being presented with quantified “facts.” We want to detect bias and account for it. So let’s start with our own statistics in content marketing. Because, seriously, too many of the …

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Suspicious Statistics in Content Marketing

Marketing technologists and growth hackers, oh my

April 30, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

The terms “marketing technologist” and “growth hacker” seem to be gaining traction out there. Voice-based marketing automation provider ifbyphone recently released their annual State of Marketing Measurement Survey for 2013, which included the following results on the evolution of the marketing team: 31% have a marketing technologist 25% have a growth hacker Marketing automation is used more frequently by teams with growth hackers (44%) than teams without growth hackers (26%) Ifbyphone defines a marketing technologist …

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Pragmatic marketing vs. hype cycles and false dilemmas

April 27, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

Darling, I don’t know why I go to extremes Too high or too low there ain’t no in-betweens — Billy Joel There’s a common fallacy known as a false dilemma or false dichotomy. It’s where you’re artificially presented with a black-and-white, either-or choice: you’re forced to choose between all of one or all of the other. “You’re either with us or against us!” It’s a fallacy because, most of the time, you’re not actually constrained …

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Advice from a Jedi Knight of marketing experimentation

April 25, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

A couple of months ago, I wrote a column on Search Engine Land titled Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data. A shorter spin-off of my post here on the big data bubble in marketing, its overarching message was that in a world of ever more data, experimentation would inevitably become king. The message seemed to resonate, and the article was widely shared. However, my suggestion that the number of people empowered to …

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Does marketing science mean you can predict the future?

April 22, 2013 / Marketing Data / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

If I were a marketer psychologist — that is, a therapist to marketing teams, for which I’m sure there’s a market — I could imagine making a fine living by asking open-ended questions, such as “What does marketing science mean to you?”, and holding up a mirror to people’s responses. I hear you say data-driven. What’s your earliest memory of working with data? “Marketing as a science” strikes me as a bit of a Rorschach …

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Haves vs. have-nots in marketing/sales alignment

April 11, 2013 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I first met Brian Kardon a couple of years ago, when he was the CMO of Eloqua. He was one of the early advocates for this blog, and he provided a lot of encouragement on the emergence of this new breed of “marketing technologists” that they were seeing appear among many of their customers. When we first met for coffee, I remember him asking me what my hobbies were. I replied that this blog was …

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In the land of marketing, operations may become king

April 9, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 9 Comments

Last month, I attended the Marketing Operations Executive Summit — an intimate gathering of around 100 marketing operations executives — to give a talk on agile marketing. What I left with, however, was a profound appreciation for the ascendency of the marketing operations role. In the words of Craig Moore, a director at Sirius Decisions and the opening speaker, until recently, marketing operations was the island of misfit toys. It was definitely not the sexy …

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Marketing Operations: From Misfit Toys To Strategic Advisory

64% of B2B marketers feel underinvested in technology

April 4, 2013 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 1 Comment

Any doubt that marketing is becoming a technology-powered discipline? The ITSMA (Information Technology Services Marketing Association) shared results from their latest survey on marketing technology at a briefing outside of Boston earlier this week. The slide above shows the big picture result: today, 21% of B2B marketers believe that marketing technology is critical to deliver on marketing’s business objectives. But in 2 years, 60% expect marketing technology will be critical to that mission. This survey …

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Marketing Technology Critical to Success

Marketo seeks $75 million IPO in marketing automation

April 3, 2013 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Late yesterday, the story broke on TechCrunch that Marketo has filed for a $75 million IPO. Congratulations to everyone there, but a special nod to the early founders Phil Fernandez, Jon Miller, and David Morandi, who were key folks at early marketing software pioneer Epiphany 10 years ago (which itself, tangentially, was founded by Steve Blank, the fellow who inspired Eric Ries in the launch of the Lean Startup movement). Taken in the context of …

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Marketing takes over IT, sales takes over marketing

April 1, 2013 / Other / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

The start of this new quarter has proven to be a tipping point. We’ve now heard of several leading enterprises that are undertaking a major restructuring of marketing, IT, and sales to better align themselves with the market forces of the 21st century. Under this new organizational structure — code-named “Greener Grass” at one Fortune 500 firm — the following changes are being implemented immediately: Marketing will now officially take over IT. This shift was inevitable …

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