Marketing Management

These are remarks I’m delivering today for the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony at my alma mater, the School of General Studies at Columbia University. Since these five strategies come in handy in my work nearly every day, I thought I share them here as well. When I arrived at Columbia, a 30-year-old software entrepreneur with a chip on his shoulder about never finishing college, I was pretty fearless. Tackle art history, no problem. Learn …

5 Strategies for Business, Life and Really Hard Math Problems Continue Reading »

A recent Forrester report on Understanding The Marketing Technology Buying Process (which is also available from Neolane) had a few exciting revelations. Their survey of 137 customer intelligence professionals — whom they see as a new breed of marketer — showed that marketing is now starting to lead the buying process for marketing technologies. I know, that probably sounds obvious — marketing leading marketing technology decisions. It’s like asking who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? But …

Forrester: Establish a marketing technology office Continue Reading »

Written version of my Search Insider Summit presentation today: In the beginning, there was marketing. Simply marketing. Then, in the era of Mad Men, the marketing universe split in two. Suddenly, we had brand marketing, building a brand image, a position in the market — marketing above the fray. Versus direct marketing, right down in the frothy fray of persuading individual prospects to do something, the origin of calls-to-action and conversion rates. Specialized galaxies of …

From marketing specialties to marketing mash-ups Continue Reading »

Last month, the IT Services Marketing Association published an interview with me, Do You Need a Chief Marketing Technologist? (Note: the article is free for ITSMA members, but $195 for everyone else.) Although I’ve made the case for a chief marketing technologist several times before on this blog (my original post, my Search Insider presentation, and my Pivot presentation), the ITSMA interview had some great discussion and pushback on whether marketing should have its own …

Lobbying for marketing technologists outside IT Continue Reading »

I have to share an inspiring IT-marketing experience with you. I’ve advocated before that IT doesn’t need to own and implement all technology in an organization in order to provide valuable guidance and oversight. Instead, the CIO can provide governance on independently operated technology projects much in the same way that the CFO provides financial governance for other departments — while still letting those groups wield their budgets without micromanagement. Or, more broadly, how the …

An inspiring case of IT-marketing governance Continue Reading »

A colleague recently alerted me to an article in Marketing Week that shares new data from a Forrester report by Chris Stutzman: An astonishing 75% of chief marketing officers plan to rearrange their teams by the end of this year, according to a study seen exclusively by Marketing Week. Why? Because new forms of media and communications are having such a fundamental effect on business that the customer is closer to becoming king than ever …

75% of CMOs rearranging their teams in 2011 Continue Reading »

A headline on Computerworld this morning caught my eye: Apple’s iPad 2 provokes IT anxiety. I can imagine the iPad stirring up a lot of reactions — including mere indifference — but anxiety? That seems incongruous. Unless maybe you’re HP, Motorola or Samsung. But the article starts off with, “As exciting as the new iPad 2 is bound to be for both consumers and business users, some IT executives who will have to support the …

The tyranny of consumerization. Really? Continue Reading »

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Chris Kuenne wrote a terrific guest editorial in Ad Age a couple of weeks ago: Four Talent Categories You Need to Win in a Connected World. This is one of the best articles I’ve read yet that focuses on how the structure of the marketing organization needs to — and is finally starting to — change. He makes an apt analogy comparing the old approach to football teams …

A Rubik’s Cube structure for the marketing department Continue Reading »

Want to know the formula for success? Here it is: This was published by marketing metrics master Pat LaPointe earlier this week in his Metrics Insider column. Read the full article for his accompanying explanation and insight. Success is the sum of all your experience finding insights, transforming them into action, and trying to create more value than the resources you consume in the process. And then all of this is raised to the power …

A marketing-math geek’s formula for success Continue Reading »

This is both an anniversary post and a state-of-the-market update. Three years ago, I launched this blog to focus on marketing technology — and perhaps more importantly — the new professionals emerging at that intersection, marketing technologists. At the time, I did a quick Google search for a couple of phrases: “chief marketing technologist” and “director of marketing technology” to see how popular those job titles were. Both terms predated my blog, although neither was …

Got marketing technologists? 1,000-fold growth Continue Reading »