Scott Vaughan says, “I’m sitting around with a bunch of friends on a recent off-road trip. Nearly all have professional gigs and work in some type of corporation. The conversation kicks up about our jobs, how we got started and so on. To get the full picture, we have engineers, sales, finance and operations pros all represented, all with big opinions. I proceed to talk about my marketing role. The grief starts flying: “Go play with your crayons, make us some t-shirts, perhaps a slogan!” No clue as to the complexity and effort required for real marketing. I tried to explain (maybe a... [...]

Marry Wallace says, “Marketing automation tools empower marketers to create high-return campaigns that have a specific message based on a prospect’s needs. Using targeted messages coupled with strong content, marketers can effectively engage and escort leads down the buying cycle to a sale. Campaigns are most effective when both content and message speak directly to the buyer’s needs. This means multiple campaigns are essential to address different (specific) needs. Each campaign focuses on leads that are grouped together based on their pain points. Grouping or segmenting leads is the... [...]

Eric Enge says, “Back in August, I posited the concept of a two-factor ranking model for SEO. The idea was to greatly simplify SEO for most publishers and to remind them that the finer points of SEO don’t matter if you don’t get the basics right. The reason that machine learning is important to this picture is that search engines are investing heavily in improving their understanding of language. Hummingbird was the first algorithm publicly announced by Google that focused largely on addressing an understanding of natural language, and RankBrain was the next such algorithm. I believe... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Every marketer wants to know which spending across the customer funnel had the biggest impacts on generating leads, closing sales or reaching other goals. Attribution service Bizible sifts through marketers’ data — sales records, customer relationship management files, ad networks, websites and the like — to show which parts had what kind of impact. It’s a look back at the completed information, to determine what efforts should receive more credit. The platform has offered that analysis through five out-of-the-box models that are designed for different use cases.... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Data privacy advocates — and marketers concerned about ensuring user privacy — may have a new worry. It’s possible to determine a user’s real identity — up to 70 percent of the time — simply from an anonymous browsing history. That’s the key finding in a recently released paper from researchers at Princeton and Stanford universities. The paper, “De-anonymizing Web Browsing Data with Social Networks,” is scheduled for presentation in April at the World Wide Web Conference in Perth, Australia. One of the paper’s authors, Assistant Professor of Computer... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Let’s say you create a mobile app. And you get it accepted into Apple’s and Google’s app stores. Now what? There are zillions of apps added to the app stores every week, so your biggest problem is simply getting found. Maybe you could luck out and get featured by the App Store. Or maybe you invest a considerable budget in ads encouraging users to install your app — even though they don’t really know it. Palo Alto, California-based Branch is out this week with a free solution that it believes could dramatically change these choices, by changing how app content... [...]

Victoria Godfrey says, “Marketing automation technology is designed to automate portions of the marketing process and provide data that helps marketers and brands determine who to target across multiple outreach methods. But it’s not just a tool; marketers use automation technology to strategize and implement business decisions. When using marketing automation platforms to maximize email efforts, marketers need to choose the correct tool with the proper features and use the data produced to its greatest potential. Once marketers are able to gain insight into how recipients are engaging... [...]

Russell Glass says, “I’ve been a marketer and entrepreneur for more than 20 years, and each year seems to bring a new whirlwind of change. In 2016, social media grew even more powerful, dictating the news and shaping our public discourse. Chatbots and artificial intelligence started to gain traction and are opening entirely new avenues for brands to reach customers. And the shift to mobile continued to gain steam, with everything from ordering dinner to booking a vacation now done on smartphones and tablets. Marketers are racing to keep up, and 2017 is about to bring more changes. Here... [...]

Victoria Godfrey says, “If you have read the annual prediction articles in the last few years, one of the prominent projections you’ve likely seen is, “This is the year data-driven marketing campaigns take hold.” But really, data-driven marketing has always been critical — and in 2017, it’s going to continue to be at the forefront of marketers’ strategies. As we make our predictions for 2017, one thing is clear: using data to tailor your messages will remain a critical part of any marketing strategy. Today’s companies are focused on maximizing data to provide insights that ultimately... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “AdStage, the platform for managing search and social pay-per-click campaigns, is set to expand the number of channels it supports and add integrations with marketing automation and customer relationship platforms for campaign targeting, optimization and reporting. AdStage V2 launched on Thursday, along with the AdStage Universal Data API, which lets advertisers import cross-channel campaign data into other platforms for reporting and intelligence. The company says AdStage V2 will soon support more channels such as Snapchat, Pinterest and DoubleClick and integrate with... [...]