Marketing Management

About a month ago, I received an odd comment on my blog, “Martec’s Law was quoted by the Portuguese navy with respect to asymmetrical warfare. It is definitely a law now.” Huh? That mandated an immediate Google search. Sure enough, Martec’s Law had just appeared in Jane’s Defense Weekly — what AdAge is to marketers, Jane’s is to defense industry professionals — in the article, Portuguese Navy reveals existence of “tech guerrilla” unit. (Ironically under …

What do martech and the Portuguese navy have in common? Continue Reading »

There are notable inflection points in the history of martech where you simply have to pause and say, “Wow, the world sure has changed.” Crossing more than 1,000 solutions on the marketing technology landscape in 2014 was one. Digital ad spend surpassing traditional ad spend earlier this year was another. And now here’s a big one: “shadow IT” is going from bad to good — even in the eyes of IT. Shadow IT is coming …

A martech milestone: IT leaders embrace the upside of “shadow IT” Continue Reading »

I was reading Gartner’s latest CMO Spend Survey 2019-2020 — spoiler alert: average marketing budgets have fallen to 10.5% of company revenue and the percentage of the marketing budget dedicated to martech slipped from 29% to 26% — when something truly remarkable popped out at me. On page 20, Gartner included the chart at the top of this post, listing CMOs top supporters and top inhibitors. The IT Organization was the top of the top …

The 10-years war between marketing and IT is over Continue Reading »

In Gartner’s most recent Marketing Organizational Survey for 2019 — how marketing leaders structure their teams today and how they expect them to change over the next several years — a remarkable finding popped out to me: 20% of respondents reported that they run some form of decentralized marketing organization today. By the end of 2022, however, a majority — 51% — expect they will have a decentralized structure in place. A 31 point jump …

The (near) future of marketing is decentralized Continue Reading »

The theme of my keynote talk at the MarTech conference earlier this month was “platforming marketing.” (Watch a reenacted video of the keynote here.) I’ve spent much of my career thinking about two broad topics: marketing and platforms. Yet it took me a while to recognize that the patterns I see in software platforms are the same thing I now see happening with the democratization of martech within marketing organizations today. They’re both striving to …

Platforming Marketing: 8 P’s of Self-Service Martech Continue Reading »

We had a fantastic MarTech event this week. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed and participated in it. My keynote was “Platforming Marketing” — how the next stage of martech maturity is about applying platform principles in marketing to empower your entire organization to leverage martech capabilities in their work. While we did not record the keynote live, I decided to recreate a version of it with Loom: I hope to see you at a …

Video recreation of my MarTech opening keynote: Platform Marketing Continue Reading »

You’re familiar with Gartner’s iconic hype cycle, right? Pretty much every technology follows the same pattern of unrealistic hype in its early stages, followed by a crash of disappointment when those lofty aspirations fail to materialize. But then it steadily climbs up the “slope of enlightenment,” where reality and reasonable expectations eventually converge. I’ve heard many people say that martech has entered the “trough of disillusionment” stage of the hype cycle this year. After buying …

Is martech in the trough of disillusionment? I hope so Continue Reading »

On the surface, this cartoon last week from Tom Fishburne, the talented Marketoonist, seems to be poking fun at the different “chief” titles that marketers and marketing-ish executives use. Ha ha, us mad marketing people and our zany titles du jour. But my reaction was: this is exactly why marketing is so challenging today. No, the challenge isn’t sorting out which title to use. (Although what we call something does impact the way it’s framed …

This perfectly captures the Herculean challenge of modern marketing Continue Reading »

Martech is marketing — at least an essential part of it. And MarTech is the place to master it. Next month in Boston, we’ll be hosting the latest and greatest MarTech conference, September 16-18 at the Hynes Convention Center. Come soak up three days worth of educational sessions covering key topics and practices across marketing technology and operations, featuring: 6 keynotes from superstars such as Charlene Li and Mitch Joel 24 breakout educational sessions across …

Want to thrive with martech and marketing operations? Check out these 75 amazing MarTech sessions Continue Reading »

Sorry, but odds are you’re failing at SEO and probably don’t even realize it. That was the cold splash of water in the face that I got talking with Jessica Bowman, owner of enterprise SEO consultancy SEO Inhouse, author of The Executive SEO Playbook, and an editor-at-large for Search Engine Land. Jessica is pretty much the world’s leading expert when it comes to running successful SEO at large enterprise companies. Frankly, SEO is not a …

Is your martech leadership failing on SEO? Probably Continue Reading »