How to Solve the Marketing Skills Gap In Your Company

Training-Marketers

A few weeks ago I was talking to Maureen Blandford about marketers, marketing technology, and the need for all of us to move faster.

Our conversation turned to skill sets and the current digital and technology skills gap in marketing today. A thought I had in that conversation has been gnawing at me since: “Today’s marketers don’t have the aptitude for marketing technology.” [Read more…]

Advertising, Big Data, and Google’s Moves To Own It All

Google LogoGoogle just made two major announcements. Long-term, these could change the face of online marketing and advertising for almost every company. But before we look at how they are related, two background points are key.

1. When it comes to online advertising revenue, no one is bigger than Google. Not even Facebook comes close.

2. Online advertising companies that use big data in advertising are today’s market darlings. RocketFuel’s successful IPO last week underlines the value the market is putting on these companies.

Google wants to be both. [Read more…]

6 Cringeworthy Marketing Technology Failures

Marketing Technology FailToday’s marketing simply wouldn’t exist without marketing technology. From marketing automation to demand side platforms to content management systems, technology puts the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

Or at least that’s how it is supposed to happen.

You no longer create your marketing communications. You just create the rules. The system does the rest. [Read more…]

7 Nurture Programs You Need To Have

Nurture ProgramsDespite the capabilities of modern marketing automation platforms, many B2B marketers still approach nurture with a short term mindset.

Your primary goal is to increase engagement, raise lead scores and pass a more active “lead” to sales as quickly as possible.

The result is often a series of short term “nurture” programs combined with campaign blasts sent sporadically to a huge list of inactive contacts.

Yes, it may be an improvement from when all you had were batch email blasts, but you can and should do so much more today. [Read more…]

3 Reasons B2B Marketers Should Not Use Microsites

Crumbling Third Party Cookies Will Impact B2B MarketersIf online advertising isn’t a meaningful part of your B2B marketing program, you may have dismissed the recent uproar caused by Firefox’s decision to block third party cookies.

However, it doesn’t just impact online advertisers. Many B2B marketers will be impacted as well.

One of the biggest casualties will be your campaign microsites. [Read more…]

When Marketing Automation Is the Wrong Solution

Chainsaw PumpkinYou wouldn’t jump in your car to go from the living room to the kitchen or pull out the chainsaw to cut a stick of butter.

Just because it is a more more powerful solution doesn’t mean it is necessary or advisable.

Marketing automation is quickly becoming like the self-driving car for B2B marketing. Led by Eloqua (now part of Oracle) and Marketo (with a very successful IPO last week), today marketing automation companies are collectively worth billions. [Read more…]

3 Steps to Using Data in an Imperfect Data World

Archery target with arrows around the edgeData is reinventing the online advertising market. Today, algorithmic media buying is one of the fastest growing areas in online advertising and without data, it wouldn’t even exist.

This isn’t just a consumer advertising trend, increasingly B2B advertising is being driven by data as well.

However, the problem with online data is it is inherently dirty. Collected from registration forms, browsing behavior or appended offline data sources, collecting online data is an imperfect process at best.

So what is the smart way to use dirty data to improve your advertising? Glad you asked.

Here are three steps that will guide both media and creative. [Read more…]

Will Jet Engines Ever Be Social?

What would a jet engine say if it was on a social network?

The CMO of GE talked about this in a video earlier this year at Dreamforce. Wow, what a question. To think, soon your refrigerator, car and, yes, jet engines may be part of your social network.

But as devices join you on Facebook, Twitter or other social platforms, are they really becoming social? [Read more…]

Marketing Automation’s Next Frontier: Madison Avenue

Marketers have invested in marketing automation, content and, in many cases, creating complex business rules to determine what content and message to deliver when.

This represents a significant investment but, for many companies, the application has been limited to emails and landing pages.

The real value is in the rules and logic used to deliver the right message at the right time. The next evolution in marketing automation will be extending the application of these rules across the full spectrum of digital and addressable marketing channels. [Read more…]