A Cookieless World? Who Cares When You Have Bio-metrics
Privacy and personalization have struggled to co-exist for a while now in driving consumer experience. The paradox is driven by marketers looking to improve contextual messaging to customers, while consumers are more aware of data being captured and tracked. The main way a lot of personalization has worked has been through cookies, small text files written to your computer that your web browser can access. The technical way cookies are now being handled by web browsers is … [Read More...]
Data as a Currency, Rethink Your Marketing
The new digital currency isn’t Bitcoin. It’s Data. It’s also more important than ever to really understand that data isn’t something you have a right to own, it’s something that consumers expect to get value in return for. Every marketer who is “data driven” and focused on using data to refine their campaigns or develop better creative are missing the mark. Great marketers now recognize the value exchange of data for reward AND this needs to happen in real time. Given that we are in the … [Read More...]
Is Your Marketing Team a Cost Center or Profit Center?
What value do you bring to your organization as a marketer? If you had 2 minutes to tell the CEO what value you provided in quantifiable means could you do it? Most marketers would struggle with this. Ask a sales person this same question and they'll tell you how revenue in sales they've driven, how they're tracking to their targets and what big deals they're working on. In very simple terms that's the difference between being perceived as being a cost c enter versus a profit center. The … [Read More...]
How Donald Trump Mastered Digital Marketing and SEO
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. -Roger "Verbal" Kint aka Kevin Spacey This is an example of the downfall or the positive side of Google's shift to real time search results. I guess it all depends on where your political views land. To me though the recent attacks on Ted Cruz around allegations that he has had extra-marital affairs, has done something fantastic for Donald Trump. Outside of the political space it's impacted his digital brand, … [Read More...]
2016 The Year Digital Entered Adulthood
2016 is going to be an important year. It's going to be the last year that the last of the mass media channels draws more dollars than digital media. With TV likely to be surpassed by digital next year. It's the last year the CTO will outspend the CMO on digital technology. It's the year mobile continues to surpass desktop usage, and we move from a mobile first to needing to think mobile only in some cases. It's the year that digital media buying becomes the way you buy … [Read More...]
When Brand Marketing Became a Bottom of Funnel Activity
For a long time, when you talked to a marketer about “Brand Marketing” it was very closely focused on top of the funnel, driving awareness. It was fueled by mass media. It was measured by aided and unaided brand awareness. Marketers would measure brand association to product categories. The focus on brand was always top of the funnel, then we went digital. Digital marketing is more measurable than mass media, and it drives more accountability for where dollars are spent and funny enough … [Read More...]
Technology’s Place in Marketing
In 2012 Gartner presented a prediction that by 2017 the CMO would outspend the CIO when it came to IT costs. It’s now 2016 we’re a year away from 2017 and this statement appears as if it could be true. CMOs/Marketers are influencing more digital spending decisions than ever. Marketing has embraced technology at a rapid pace, and cloud marketing platforms are becoming a standard part of any marketing arsenal. Innovation and Growth Isn’t Driven By Technology But you know what? Technology … [Read More...]
5 Things Marketing in the 50s & 60s Can Teach Digital Marketers
Marketing has been around for a long time, as a practice it has evolved very little. The biggest changes that drove innovation were perhaps the invention of the printing press, radio, TV and internet. Each new channel bringing new capabilities and ways in which brands and companies could connect with an audience. The 1950s and 1960s are perceived as the golden age of advertising. In many ways however marketing and the challenges of marketers hasn’t changed much, but I do see a new golden age … [Read More...]
How We Fail The Connected Customer
Digitally savvy marketers are aware of the second and third screens, they are aware of the always on customer. They think mobile first when targeting consumers in engagements, but what marketers are still getting wrong is the connected customer. The biggest mistake I see marketers make that are thinking second and third screens and mobile first is when they think of the “connected customer” they think of the always online, just a second away from Facebook or Google. What they don’t realize is … [Read More...]
Enable Your Marketing Team To Be Data Agile
While many would have you believe we live in the age of the connected customer, the reality is that is not as true as we would like it to be. It's not that it's impossible to create a connected ecosystem of data, it's just that very few have truly done this (Google, Amazon, Facebook are some examples that have done this), most companies continue to struggle with getting their marketing teams data connected. The connected customer ecosystem still challenges many marketing organizations. The … [Read More...]
Brent Chaters is the author of the O'Reilly book 
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