Marketo forms a new alliance with Google Cloud
Marketo, a leading marketing automation provider, recently announced their new alliance with Google Cloud. Starting in 2018 both companies will join forces to migrate Marketo's platform from their own data centres to the Google Cloud Platform. The multi-year deal will enable Marketo to scale its infrastructure and create an integrated solution for marketers including what Google now call G Suite (Google Drive and Apps). Marketo is effectively simply a customer of Google, although some have suggested this could lead to acquisition.
It's no secret that Marketo has experienced performance and technical issues as they have grown in size. It is a common problem for growing SaaS companies that try to host everything themselves. It's frustrating for their customers, but not unusual for the industry. It has been reported that running lists can take an unusually long time and users are having to 'game' the system to…
No one trusts online ads anymore. Will blockchain change all that?
As the digital advertising landscape grows increasingly complex and fragmented, publishers are facing rising economic pressures. Meanwhile, users are concerned about privacy, security and the overall online experience. They lack control over the tracking and collection of their data, and often find their online experience degraded. The problem is simple: consumers have grown weary of an ad environment that has gone too far, while publishers fight to remain economically viable.
At the heart of all these problems, the lack of trust is poisoning the entire advertising ecosystem. Every time there’s a misguiding click, a mis-selling offer, an intrusive pop-up or ‘sponsored articles’ that aren’t really articles… trust goes further south. Click by click, day by day. In addition, when taking into account advertiser problems such as fake ad impressions or fake social…
Tap into freelance creative talent for your next campaign
When I started my career in 1999, the best and brightest creatives still worked full time. The freelancer revolution was close to 10 years away, and independent contractors were not yet thought of as a valuable resource for many companies. In some situations, they were treated like a bit of an afterthought: warm bodies that could come in to complete the low-level work the internal creatives turned up their noses at.
Then, during the first dot-com boom, something changed.
The Evolution of the Freelancer
Suddenly, there were all these new companies starting from scratch all fighting for attention. Simply existing and offering a service wasn’t enough anymore. So to stand out from the competition, smart companies began prioritizing their product design, their branding, and the quality of their advertising messaging.
Many of these new companies started in-house creative groups to vertically integrate their businesses. They used colorful…
Make sure your skills will still be relevant in 2020
As you'll know, Technology is always advancing. Facebook, Google and all the main platforms are always updating their relevant algorithms. With the continuous updates to new techniques and platforms to aid in your marketing goals, it can be hard to keep up in a rapidly changing environment. Plus, there are the fundamental marketing skills of strategy, campaign planning, and analysis which are needed as a foundation for success. These skills don't change so much but are equally important for success...
If you're interested to learn how to stay relevant for the future, register for this month's free members webinar explaining Marketing Skills for 2020 - details below.
It can be scary to think that some of the skills you have developed over years of experience may be out of date by 2020. But there is a wealth of knowledge to know about…
Semantic Web, Knowledge Graphs, Social Media and Memes
As a PhD student, I’m keen to discover the latest academic research, which often happens at conferences. Although my main area of research is within marketing, my specialist area is social media. This year I stumbled over the ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media.
In case, like me, you didn’t know, the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) is a major international organisation focused on ‘Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession’. Their members include Vint Cerf, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and many of the computing great and good. They hold 170 conferences a year and have 37 Special Interest Groups, including Hypertext and Social Media.
Academic research source: ACM Digital Library
They also have a Digital Library that contains a wealth of significant academic articles about fake news, analysing Twitter data, bots and big data, privacy and artificial intelligence, as well as every aspect of applied…
Chart of the day: Most marketers are empowered to collaborate with sales
Research has found that marketing and sales are aligning more than ever, sharing insights and metrics. The study shows marketers usually understand what sales need from them.
The positive results from Salesforce show:
Marketers understand how they impact individual customers.
Marketers believe they send high-quality leads for the most part and marketing and sales share common goals and metrics.
They both also share data and imp[ortantly marketers understand what sales need to succeed and how they can assist with that.
The results suggest that sales and marketing metrics and goals are aligning, that they have regular communication and empathy for each other. In turn, supporting each other to succeed. This research is very positive for the effect marketing has on sales, in supporting their efforts. Perhaps marketers are now targeted on leads, quality of…
Chart of the Day: Mergers & Acquisition activity involving AI companies is increasing rapidly.
First people build things in their garages. Then the startup ecosystem develops. Then the tech gets noticed. Then the big players start realizing how disruptive it will be, and they start buying up the startups so they're the ones doing the disrupting, rather than being disrupted.
It's a cycle as old as silicon valley (so not really that old in the scheme of things). We've seen businesses like Amazon, Google and Facebook go from dorm rooms to garages to becoming some of the most valuable companies in the entire world.
Now it is artificial intelligence tech that is the exciting new technology with the power to transform how we live work and organize the world. The possibilities for marketers are enormous, so it is wise to keep an eye on how the tech is maturing.
The chart below shows how many…
Are you embracing AI to improve your ad campaigns?
Throughout the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) and its multitude of uses for marketing have become more and more obvious. While many brands were hesitant to explore the plethora of benefits it offers, 2017 is seeing brands dipping their toes into the AI waters, ready to embrace it as a beneficial component of their marketing strategies.
Take a look at these 3 ways artificial intelligence will affect marketing even more in 2017.
Impactful Ads
The creation of better advertisements is one of the biggest ways artificial intelligence will impact marketing in 2017. The ability for brands to use AI to research and develop crucial marketing aspects, such as keyword searches, empowers marketers to build smarter, more effective ads that should lead to more conversions.
For years, companies have focused on who to show ads to and when to show the ads. AI allows marketers to, instead,…
6 steps to getting more from your meetings
Meetings are a necessity for most business operations, especially marketing, where independent campaigns are running simultaneously under the same broad goals. You’ll need to gather your team to brainstorm new ideas, update each other on individual progress, come together for mutual tasks, and follow up after a campaign’s end to review and evaluate what comes next. In an ideal world, every meeting would instantly bring each team member up to speed and give them the resources they need to continue their work.
Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. Most marketing meetings end up wasting time in at least one dimension, whether that’s by straying off topic, disrupting people from work, hosting too many people, or lacking any actionable conclusion. David Grady explains some of the mechanics in this TED Talk, and in recent years, meetings have come under the microscope of other…
Developing your startup pitch
The perfect startup pitch helps entrepreneurs separate their companies from a growing amount of competition. Startup activity in the United States increased in 2016, continuing an upward trend that began in 2015, according to the Kauffman Foundation. All of this comes after startup activity reached its lowest point in the last 20 years in 2014.
A more competitive market reinforces the notion that startups need more than a good business idea to become successful — entrepreneurs must convince others to invest in their business. Making that case persuasively is as much science as it is art.
The following sections offer some guidelines and examples for developing the perfect startup pitch.
How to Make a Startup Pitch
Research
Make sure you research and double-check every detail of your presentation. You should have an understanding of your product or service, the market and how these two areas interact.
“What is your competitive advantage?”…
