Courtesy of @INCOREAGENCY
I’m @johnbugay.
Caution: Heavy Lifting on the IT Side of Marketing
Alan Pringle @scriptorium has put together an article that could have been subtitled, “The Technical Side of Content Management: 11 Questions to Ask”.
When IT is MIA, content strategy crumbles.
Based on “hard experience”, he makes the following personnel-based observation:
Among those authoring content, have at least two tech-savvy employees who are the main points of contact with the IT department. These technical liaisons collect information about performance issues and other problems and then work with the IT group to solve the issues. Don’t play the I’m just a writer and don’t want to be bothered with the technical details card and leave all the heavy lifting to the IT group.
He notes, “Having a primary IT resource for content processes is a logical approach, but there needs to be a secondary resource who is more than just a backup in name only. The secondary resource should be well-versed in the tools and participate in basic maintenance to develop a working knowledge of the system.”
At this point, I just want to point out the line on my résumé where it says I was “marketing liaison with MIS/IT”. I’m a guy who can handle the heavy lifting on the IT side of the Marketing house.
Do you know someone who needs help with that?
I’m @johnbugay.
Link between Marketing and Technology enables greater ROI tracking
B-to-B Magazine highlighted the growing link between “marketing” and “technology”, and the competitive advantage that the linkage brings, at its kickoff to the Internet Week conference in New York.
Sheryl Pattek, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research, said that the ability to track marketing ROI through technology is the most important change contributing to the evolution of the marketing profession. Generally speaking:
Marketers and information technology departments are joined at the hip today, with IT leaving behind its singular focus on back-office operations and increasingly enabling customer information and service … “Five years ago we had only a handful of people handling our website,” said Eduardo Conrado, senior VP-marketing and IT at Motorola Solutions. “Today, 18% to 20% of the entire marketing staff is working on technology enablement for marketing, sales and customers.”
That kind of technology includes the means to deal with “a newcomer to the world of IT villains, [as a] Deluge O’Data floods enterprises mercilessly. If directed and channeled for good, however, this surprising life form could transform the enterprise landscape and bring new growth.”
Out of a corner: “Learning a lot”
Getting out of a corner
That’s how it worked when I started running. I wanted to know “the right way” to do things.
Back then, there was a “Complete Book of Running”, by a writer named Jim Fixx. As the graphic nearby shows, Fixx then went on to write a “Second Book of Running”. Here’s the problem, though, as he stated it. If you’re going to write a “complete book” of something, there ought not to be a need for a “second book”. Thus, his foreword carried the title “Out of a Corner”.
He needed to explain the need for this second book in the light of his first. That’s how it worked then, and that’s how it works now. I need to explain my way out of a corner.
One of the first things I did, upon entering the ranks of the “available” (in a business sense), was to start a blog, “Learning Eloqua”. After all, that’s what I do. In another part of my world, I’m a team-member of a highly-regarded and widely-read theology blog, Triablogue. I’m accustomed to waking up at 3:00 AM and pumping out a fully-developed, well-thought-out blog article by 4:30 AM.
But in the process of “Learning Eloqua”, I stumbled upon (can’t get away from it) a lot of other things that I needed to learn. I stumbled upon Twitter, and through Twitter, I have been tripping over things left and right.
One of my deepest sorrows (in a business sense) is that, by the time I figured out that I needed an Eloqua certification, I was no longer in a position to get one. So it was to my great joy that a similar kind of certification, a HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification was available for free through Hubspot’s website. (HT: Brenda Stoltz at Ariad Partners).
Now, in this case, “free” doesn’t mean “cheap”. There are nine hour-long video lessons, and a 50-question test (which I have not yet attempted) in order to become certified.
So far, I’ve been able to bring myself up-to-date with web (keyword) optimization, blogging (in a business sense), and as I write this, “social media”. On tap are “content with a purpose”, “the anatomy of a landing page”, “the conversion process”, “closing” and “cultivating delighted customers”.
Looking at Eloqua’s Topliners community, I can still see that there are many gaps in what I (and apparently many others) still need to know. But I’m nudging things forward.
The bottom line is, I’m still “Learning Eloqua”, and I still hope to work with that blog. Lord willing, I’ll have an opportunity to work for an Eloqua-using company, on an Eloqua-using team. But if not, wherever I go will find me “learning a lot”, in a mode of continuous improvement.
Back when I was learning to run, there were a couple of “running” songs that would go through my mind. “Running on Empty” and “Running Against the Wind”. Sometimes it still seems like that. Some things don’t change.
Keep on moving forward, in spite of the obstacles.
Twitter and me
If you follow me on any of the “social media”, you’ve likely seen a lot from me, in the form of re-tweets and six-second Vine videos.
A couple of articles inspired me:
The New Résumé: It’s 140 Characters
Subhead: Some Recruiters, Job Seekers Turn to Twitter, but Format Is a Challenge; Six-Second Video Goes Viral
How to Tweet Your Way to Your Dream Job
Subhead: Three Out of Four People are in Constant Job-Search Mode and, Increasingly, Twitter is Their Tool of Choice. Here’s How to Make 140 Characters Work for You.
Here’s my 140 character résumé, give or take:
@johnbugay: Email marketing, marketing automation, Eloqua user. Marketing manager, copywriter, content, data analysis, segmentation.
Where are the “marketing automation” experts in Pittsburgh?
Sitting on the sidelines
But it seems as if very few people in Pittsburgh even know what “marketing automation” is, and fewer still know how to excel at it.
While things like “marketing automation”, “inbound marketing”, “content marketing”, and “demand generation” are setting the rest of the marketing world on fire, it seems as if very few marketing organizations and fewer ad agencies in Pittsburgh even know what it is.
Take a look at the websites of three of the largest ad agencies in Pittsburgh:
You won’t find “marketing automation” or the other terms on these sites. And yet, it should be “bread-and-butter” for these folks. Especially if they want to consider themselves as “thought leaders”.
“Marketing automation” is as important a discipline as there is now. And yet there are still agencies who are leading with their prowess on “SEO”, even though changing Google algorithims are rendering that discipline obsolete.
Eloqua and Marketo are probably the leading solution providers in this space. Eloqua had an IPO about a year ago for $12 per share, and Oracle bought them in December for $24 per share at quite a premium. Marketo had an IPO on Friday, opening at about $13 per share, and closing at $23.
Neither of these is an earth-shattering amount in the billions, but these are only two of probably several dozen “marketing automation” solution providers who are elbowing each other for market share. Their success portends a trend.
And it’s not so new that folks can’t have heard about it. Especially not if they’re having extremely successful IPOs.
Much of Pittsburgh seems to be sitting out this hugely important technological development.
