Marketing Management

I’ve been advocating for marketing to lead its own technology for almost 5 years now. I believe that the splicing of code and data into the DNA of marketing is one of the big picture meta-trends of our industry. Forrester has recommended a marketing technology office within the marketing department. Recent Gartner research shows that 72% of high-tech marketers now have a chief marketing technologist role in their organizations. Even IBM is now championing the …

3 enterprises where marketing leads marketing technology Continue Reading »

Today the Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs, and Brighcove released a new 2013 B2B content marketing report with updated benchmarks, budgets, and trends for North America. It sheds light on the budgets, content tactics, and social distribution channels that B2B marketers are using to build brand awareness, acquire customers, and generate leads. But one of the things I found most interesting was this: Out of the 1,416 respondents, 56% do all their content creation in-house. Even …

Good content marketing is a part of customer experience Continue Reading »

The fast-paced evolution of marketing is a sea of trends, from attribution models to the Zero Moment of Truth. So many trends, in fact, that it can be hard to keep track of them all. A meta-trend runs deeper, powering more specific trends, like a tidal force that drives waves to the shore. The following graphic illustrates five meta-trends that I believe underpin almost all of the marketing trends we see today — and new …

5 meta-trends underlying almost all of modern marketing Continue Reading »

Virginia Sharma, VP of Marketing and Communications at IBM India/South Asia, recently posted a presentation on SlideShare titled The New Profession on a Smarter Planet: Chief Marketing Technologist. The chief marketing technologist from IBM India Smarter Marketing According to Virginia, the timeless responsibilities of marketers everywhere: Knowing the customer. Defining what to market and how to market it. Protecting the brand promise. …are evolving into three imperatives for a new profession: Understanding each customer as …

IBM champions the chief marketing technologist Continue Reading »

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 …

A more realistic diagram of the B2B marketing funnel Continue Reading »

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 …

62% of marketing departments do control their technology Continue Reading »

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 …

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

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 …

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

Nobody likes to see their idea lose. Everybody wants straight A’s. Look good for the boss. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect: all the children are above average. (If you don’t appreciate that joke, take this pop quiz.) So at some level it’s not surprising that survey data of Fortune 1,000 marketers from the CEB Marketing Leadership Council shows that only 50% of marketers agree or strongly agree with the statement: “My team accepts that some …

“We want to test bold, new ideas that always work.” Continue Reading »

Last week, I gently ribbed the Marketing Leadership Council of the CEB over their HBR post, Marketers Flunk the Big Data Test. I felt the statistics they were sharing about