Scott Brinker

Whatever it is, we’re calling it “marketing automation”

October 14, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 4 Comments

“Marketing automation” as the label for a major — if slightly amorphous — category of modern marketing software appears to be here to stay. Three recent points on the curve: The acquisition of Pardot by ExactTarget, labeled as a marketing automation deal. The IPO of Eloqua earlier this year, again labeled as a marketing automation offering. A recent IDC report that includes marketing automation as an explicit budget allocation. The latter is perhaps the most …

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A more realistic diagram of the B2B marketing funnel

October 13, 2012 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Just have to share this terrific visualization posted in a blog article by Lori Wizdo of Forrester Research, Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide The Buyer’s Journey. “The buyer’s journey looks at lot more like this,” writes Lori, “than the linear models (e.g., the funnel) that we usually use as a graphical representation.” “This buyer dynamic changes the role of B2B marketing in a fundamental way. Marketing now owns a much bigger piece of the …

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62% of marketing departments do control their technology

October 12, 2012 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I was a bit flabbergasted when I wrote yesterday’s post noting that, according to a recent ITSMA and VisionEdge Marketing report, 59% of marketers don’t specify what they want in the marketing technology purchase process. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the magnitude of that number. Could that many marketers in 2012 be that disconnected from the modern tools of their trade? I can imagine a lot of excuses — semi-legitimate reasons for why …

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Are 59% of marketers driving off a marketing technology cliff?

October 11, 2012 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

I accept that the relationship between marketing and IT is a complex one. Although my opinion is that marketing should specify, recommend, select, purchase, and operate its own marketing technology — I believe it is now an integral part of what marketing is in a digital world — I also acknowledge that other organizational structures can work too. If IT and marketing have a highly collaborative relationship, then keeping more of the technology management responsibilities …

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Will your next marketing manager be a bot?

October 10, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Do you think computers and software could run marketing as well as humans? Or better? Skeptics and humanists — which describes my leanings on this subject, even though I’m a technologist by trade — may reflexively answer “no.” The complex organizational and psychological facets of marketing — a discipline renown for creativity and imagination — seems like it would defy the purely mechanical capabilities of computation. That’s true today. But if you doubt the potential …

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He who controls the software, controls the marketing (video)

October 9, 2012 / Agencies / By Scott Brinker / 2 Comments

Here’s the video recording of my CreateTech presentation last month introducing marketing technologists to creative technologists. Unfortunately, the sound level is a little low and the slides aren’t in the video, but feel free to follow along with the deck below: Creative Technologists Meet Marketing Technologists from Scott Brinker

Creative technologists: meet marketing technologists

September 20, 2012 / Agencies / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

I had the pleasure of speaking this week at CreateTech, a conference run by the 4A’s (America Association of Advertising Agencies). The gist of my talk was to introduce creative technologists — who work primarily in agencies — to the marketing technology movement that’s happening in marketing departments at brands. Those of you who are already familiar with the my talks about the rise of the marketing technologist will find much of this to be …

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3 different futures for marketing technology

September 17, 2012 / Marketing Software / By Scott Brinker / 3 Comments

My post from last week — is marketing technology consolidating or diversifying — resonated with the folks at HubSpot, and they invited me to contribute a few thoughts on that subject to their blog. The result: Will Marketing Technology Look Like iOS Someday? As illustrated in the graphic above, we consider three possible futures for marketing technology: Diversified with no real center of gravity (kind of what we have today), on the left. Consolidated into …

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BI and marketing should be peanut butter and jelly (interview)

September 14, 2012 / Interviews / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

If you were to take a poll of the hot topics in marketing these days, “social media” and “big data” would both be top contenders. So when the folks at Viralheat, a provider of social media marketing software (covered in TechCrunch earlier this year), invited me to interview their Director of Business Intelligence, Erin Robbins O’Brien, on her perspective of “big data” and marketing, the hard part was narrowing my list of questions. Tell us …

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Gartner: 72% have a “chief marketing technologist” today

September 12, 2012 / Marketing Management / By Scott Brinker / Leave a Comment

Laura McLellan, a research VP at Gartner, caused quite a stir at the beginning of this year when she boldly predicted that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs. Exclaims of, “Really?!?!,” echoed among marketing and IT professionals alike for months thereafter. But the evidence was compelling, and those of us working in the marketing technology space have been witnessing this trend first-hand. Now, Laura is back with even more research to …

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