Dr. Martech and Mr. Hype: A Transformational Webinar
What does the decade ahead hold for the martech industry and profession? You’re invited into the conversation.
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MarTech is coming! MarTech is coming! To Boston Oct. 2-4
Earlier this month, we wrapped up the West Coast edition of MarTech. The conference kicked off with the Stackies, an awards ceremony celebrating exceptional illustrations of marketing technology stacks from companies like Microsoft, Cisco and many more. I also unveiled the 2017 edition of the Marketing Technology Landscape, which now includes a whopping 5,381 solutions, up […]
Separate marketing technology fact from fiction at MarTech Conference in 2 weeks
We’re two weeks away from the MarTech Conference in San Francisco, May 9-11 — the world’s largest independent marketing technology conference designed for senior-level marketers and technologists. I stress the the word independent because unlike most of the big marketing events these days that are run by Adobe, HubSpot, IBM, Marketo, Oracle, Salesforce, or alliances of smaller vendors, MarTech is produced […]
Caption Contest: What does this Marketoonist say to you?
Here’s your chance to contribute and be recognized for your own martech sense of humor by participating in the MarTech Cartoon Caption Contest. Please take a moment to come up with a creative caption for the above cartoon by Thursday, April 27 at midnight EST.
MarTech beta rates expire this week – reserve your seat now
Attend MarTech San Francisco May 9-11 for 70+ presentations, 100+ speakers, 100+ exhibitors and sponsors and networking with 2,500 martech professionals. My hand-crafted agenda is a master class in marketing, technology and management topics. You’ll be joining attendees and speakers from top brands including: Rates increase Saturday These incredibly low rates are available for only a […]
4 reasons you should attend MarTech this May
Successful organizations repeat and improve upon what works. And while last year’s MarTech San Francisco was a hit, it’s our job to find ways to improve the experience and bring more value to attendees with every new show. Here are 4 reasons you should join us this May 9-11 in San Francisco: 1. Dramatically expanded […]
Do you have the martech knowledge you need?
Albert Einstein said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” Seems the martech challenges we face prove Einstein correct yet again. Matching practical experience with the right strategy, talent and organization makes the difference between leaders and stragglers in our software-powered marketing world. Where are you on that continuum? Take our quiz and find out […]
The year in review: Top 5 MarTech insights and showstoppers
As we turn our eyes toward the new year and the next MarTech conference, we have much to reflect on. The pace of change and the adoption of marketing technologies continue to accelerate. And more than ever, marketing technology is playing a critical role in this time of massive upheaval and digital disruption. “Technology changes […]
Registration for MarTech San Francisco is open!
MarTech San Francisco is back and better than before, with twice the number of sessions, speakers and exhibitors! With 2017 promising to deliver even more change and innovation, you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to learn firsthand how digital business pioneers have navigated their own digital transformation. If you’re passionate about how […]
Don’t miss MarTech Europe next week. Hope to see you there!
I’m sure you’ve seen that MarTech Europe is next week, 1-2 November, in London. I wanted to reach out one last time to invite you to join us and remind you of the great things to look forward to at MarTech: Hear from the experts: leading brands will share how they’ve integrated marketing technologies to […]
See the complete agenda for MarTech Europe
Technology-powered marketing, or “modern” marketing, is reshaping organisations’ processes and operations, managerial hierarchies, and enabling us to reinvent the customer journey. Large enterprise websites typically have 75 technologies in their martech stacks, according to a recent study. What’s stunning is that when asked, most marketers believe they are only using 2-3 technologies. Helping you manage […]
MarTech Europe preview: Here’s what to expect in 6 weeks
We’re only six weeks away from MarTech Europe in London, November 1–2, and I’m thrilled with the program — an incredible roster of speakers bringing deep insights and experience across the intersecting fields of marketing, technology and management. I’m excited to give you a preview of what the conference will deliver, but first… If you […]
MarTech Europe is just 2 months away, don’t miss out!
We’re now less than two months away from MarTech Europe, which will take place in London on 1-2 November, and my anticipation is building. The high-velocity exchange of ideas and experiences at MarTech always teaches me so much about the rapidly evolving practice of marketing technology in B2B and B2C organizations. Above is an overview of the agenda, […]
Best. MarTech. Ever. This March In San Francisco.
You can’t scroll a mobile screenful on Twitter these days without hitting several predictions for 2016. But there’s one marketing tech prediction I can offer with 100 percent certainty: the next MarTech conference in San Francisco, March 21–22, will be the best one yet. More than 40 sessions await the nearly 2,000 attendees expected for […]
The Quintessential Marketer Scientist
Philosopher kings. Warrior poets. Scholar athletes. These compound nouns embody the grand ideal of the “hybrid” — those rare individuals who fuse multiple disciplines and talents into an epic combination. They’re larger-than-life heroes of history and literature. Modern marketing deserves its own mythical hybrid: the marketer scientist. The marketer scientist is not a reincarnation of […]
7 Principles From 7 Years Of Landing Pages
In preparing a presentation for last week’s Interactivity Digital conference in Miami, I was struck by a realization: I’ve been working with landing pages for seven years now. (Actually, I prefer to think of them as post-click experiences.) Seven years ago, my company launched its first prototype of a landing page management platform. At the […]
4 Principles Of Marketing As A Science
What is the future of marketing? You can almost hear “Science!” as intoned by a popular 80’s song by Thomas Dolby. Across our profession, more and more people are talking about marketing science, scientific marketing, marketing as a science (in contrast to an “art”), and so on. In our digitized and data-deluged world of modern […]
Agile Marketing Is The Perfect Management Framework For Big Testing
I’ve written about agile marketing several times in this column over the years. First, Agile Marketing For Conversion Optimization in 2010, and then, Have You Adopted Agile Marketing Yet? in 2012. Now it’s 2013, and I’m back with this year’s edition of my agile marketing stump speech. Why do I keep returning so doggedly to […]
A Guide To Understanding Big Testing & Massively Parallel Marketing
Last month’s column on Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data — encouraging marketing experimentation on a much broader scale than ever before — was well received. But one question came up several times in the comments: how do you enable many marketers in an organization to run experiments at the same time […]
Why Big Testing Will Be Bigger Than Big Data
Big data is a big topic these days, one that has made its way up to the C-suite. The CMO may not yet fully understand what big data is, exactly. But the CMO knows he or she needs a plan for how to use it. In fact, three of IDC’s Top 10 predictions for CMOs […]
Why Your Content Marketing Needs To Be More Active
The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently released their 2013 benchmarks on B2B content marketing. Reading it, you will be struck by two realizations: Content marketing is huge Content marketing desperately needs conversion optimization The “huge” part you probably already suspected from the deluge of blog posts out there on the subject. However, this report […]
Making The Case For Native Mobile Landing Pages
At SMX East in October 2012, I presented on mobile landing pages at the popular iConvert session. Given the surge of interest in mobile marketing, and in particular, mobile landing pages, I thought it would be a good time to cover some of the key points from that presentation here. Slideshare: The Quest for Awesome Mobile […]
Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bold Test?
“My team accepts that some experiments must fail in order for us to learn from them.” In a recent study of Fortune 1000 marketers conducted by the Marketing Leadership Council of the Corporate Executive Board, only about 50% of the respondents agreed with that statement. Think about that for a moment. In an age when […]
The Pocket-Sized Mad Scientist Of Conversion Optimization
Regular readers of the Search & Conversion column know well one of my fellow contributors, Brian Massey. His columns are consistently some of the most educational and entertaining. The first time I met Brian was at a Pubcon session on landing pages, where he had donned a white lab coat, was engaging the audience — […]
Framing Landing Pages In The Bigger Picture
It’s wonderful that landing pages have become so widely known, at least in search marketing and conversion optimization circles. They’re a well-honed tactic that everyone in our space understands. Want to improve your conversion rate on search campaigns? Direct your clickthroughs to targeted, contextually relevant landing pages. Works like a charm. But there are two […]
Have You Adopted Agile Marketing Yet?
A couple of years ago, I wrote a column that introduced agile marketing — a management approach that adapts agile software development methodologies to marketing projects. I suggested that adopting agile marketing management practices might be the single most important factor in building a successful, ongoing conversion optimization program. Two years later, I believe that’s […]
Death To The Cliché Landing Page
This week at SMX Advanced, I gave a talk titled Death to the Cliché Landing Page (link will open the deck on SlideShare.net). Since the slides are mostly visuals, I thought I’d offer a written narration for you here. Originally, this talk was simply Death to the Landing Page. But since that might have been […]
Early Stage Landing Pages At The Top Of The Funnel
For many B2B and considered purchases, buyers go through several stages of evaluating the market and choosing a seller. Different stages naturally benefit from different kinds of landing pages and conversion strategies. Here, we’ll take a look at the very top of the funnel, to see how three different companies are handling early-stage interest on […]
5 Colorful Sketches On Conversion Optimization
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But are five sketches are worth approximately one column’s worth? Doodling with a new drawing app on the iPad — 53’s Paper, which is a real beauty — I took a pass at illustrating what I consider to be five important ideas in conversion optimization. The […]
6 Interview Questions For Conversion Optimization Hires
So you’re looking to hire someone to do conversion optimization on your team? Here are six interview questions that you might consider asking. The answers aren’t necessarily black-and-white, but these kinds of questions can help reveal how a candidate thinks about conversion optimization. 1. How would you approach deciding what to optimize first? For most […]
Landing Pages 3.0: How Content & Context Plays A More Meaningful Role
Landing pages have evolved a lot over the past five years. Back in 2007, landing pages were almost cliché — what I would call Landing Pages 1.0. Take this example from Google — yes, Google — with the prototypical structure: a headline, a short description or some bullets, a small image (“hero shot”), and a […]
When A/B Testing Prices, Proceed With Caution
I had an interesting A/B testing experience over the holidays. This time, it wasn’t an A/B test that I was running, but rather an A/B test in which I was an (initially) unsuspecting participant. It reminded me of the negative side effects that certain kinds of tests can have on customers — sometimes your best […]
A Visit From Saint Click & Landing Pages In 2012
The holidays are a wonderful time for conversion optimization, especially for e-commerce. I hear that even Santa is willing to accept third-party cookies, if they’re offered with milk. So in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d begin this column by sharing with you an adapted poem I first started playing with a few […]
Rethinking The Marketing Technology Gap To Improve Performance
Last week, I heard Seth Godin speak to a group of agency executives about the future of marketing technology. Of course, if you follow Seth’s blog, you know that he almost never talks about technology per se. But he does talk a lot about customer behavior, organizational behavior and how technology is disrupting the old […]
The Art Of Seductive Landing Pages
People don’t just want to be educated about what you offer. They want to be seduced. Yes, seduced. Being seduced is an exhilarating experience. (If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.) Yes, we want to be educated and make rational decisions that optimize our goals. But we also yearn to be romanced, […]
3 Approaches To Scaling Conversion Optimization
Two powerful forces are crashing into each other in digital marketing — and conversion optimization is right in the middle. First: an ever-expanding explosion of digital touchpoints. Second: a wave of marketing technologies to address the challenges of scaling across those touchpoints. There’s more than one approach to scaling conversion optimization in this environment, and […]
Conversion Optimization In The New Marketing Landscape
Maybe I’m biased, but I see conversion optimization as the epitome of the new marketing: an agile blend of analytical experimentation, creative content, engaging user experiences, and performance metrics. Those principles are applicable in almost every corner of the marketing department these days. With that in mind, I’d like to share with you two “big […]
3 Dead Excuses For Badly Designed Landing Pages
Landing pages almost have a tradition of bad design. After all, it’s easy enough to slap a headline, a few bullets of text, and an image next to a form and — voilà! — you have a landing page, right? “Landing pages” have proliferated as a check-the-box feature: sure, we do landing pages. The problem […]
How To Track Social Conversions On Landing Pages
Earlier this month, Google released Google +1 buttons for websites. This seems like a good occasion to celebrate social conversion on landing pages — and provide you with the links and sample code to implement it in your own post-click marketing. By social conversion, we mean a social-oriented action that a user takes on one […]