Where are the “marketing automation” experts in Pittsburgh?

Sitting this one out — Sitting on the sidelines

This is a serious question. Just two months in to a job search in which I’ve focused on offering my skills in the specialized field of “marketing automation”, I cannot say that I have found any marketing automation practitioners among the ad agencies in Pittsburgh.

I follow some very active discussions about it on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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:

http://www.brunnerworks.com/

http://www.marcusa.com/

http://www.engauge.com/

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.

I was laid off again yesterday

And today, as they say, is the first day of the rest of my life, again.

Most recently, I was unemployed roughly from June 2009 through February 2010. That was a difficult time to be unemployed. The economy was a wreck, and would remain so for a couple more years. (Some will say it’s not much better, and that’s true).

I’m up early for the day – it’s about 1:50 am as I write. I hardly know where to begin. I’m thinking “Dun & Bradstreet” lists; I’m thinking “Eloqua” – I’m tagging this post “Eloqua” because I consider that to be the primary job skill I’ve picked up in the last few years. My hope is that it’s not an insignificant one.

Eloqua is “database marketing” and “marketing automation” rolled into one. I’m a member at http://www.ritesite.com – which I haven’t used for a while. I’ve been told “LinkedIn” is now a fabulous resource. I’m going to check it out. My hope is to morph this site into a job search site. Whatever that means.

For those of you who have come here, looking for news about my wife and her struggle with CMML leukemia, I guess you could say “no news is good news”. There is no sign of the recurrence of the disease. There are some annoying things going on.

For a while I had a series called “Vampire Bride”. She was getting blood transfusions on a fairly regular basis. As it turns out, with blood transfusions, iron accumulates in your body, and it can be damaging over time. So now they are “bleeding” her – taking a pint of blood out each week, (and I think they need to do this eight times), because the iron levels in her blood are too high. (What about “Geritol”?)

Plus, her immune system is brand new. So she has NO immunities built up. And so, she has managed to catch virtually every cold and bug that has come down the pike this winter.

Very high on my list of concerns will be to provide health care coverage for her. She’s a veteran, and she’s in the VA system, but moving to the VA system would force her to lose her current medical team – Dr Rossetti, Dr Jalil, and their whole group at West Penn Hospital. They saved her life, literally, and Beth is still in need of this ongoing type of treatment. They are familiar with her case. My hope would be to see it through.

On my end, it’s a whole different world. Eloqua is a whole new “job skill”. “Marketing automation” is a whole new world. The world of “social media” is completely new, since the last time I looked for a job.

For now, “job-one” is to craft a quasi-kind of plan, which can go out the door once the bullets start flying.

“Social Media” cited in improvements to customer satisfaction

“A growing number of businesses are tracking social-media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential public-relations problems,” according to the WSJ this morning.

“Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., among others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They’re also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media.”

Ford was able to avert a PR crisis with a fan website because of the quick response of its “head of social media.” PepsiCo responded quickly to criticism of a potentially offensive ad in a German-language publication. And an “emerging-media team” from Southwest Airlines shaped a positive media response to an emergency landing, citing Tweets that praised “great work by crew and customers onboard.”

“Social media have magnified the urgency of crisis communication,” says Shel Holtz, a communications consultant in Concord, Calif., and co-author of “Blogging for Business.” He says seemingly small incidents can quickly spread into bigger PR problems via the Web.”

Companies can’t get away with bad behavior because social media puts them under too much scrutiny; it only takes one blog post or tweet or YouTube video to kick-start a flood of criticism leading to damaged reputations and lost customers. All those conversations are the motivation companies have needed to start providing excellent service, if for no other reason than to avoid fast-spreading conversations about just how bad they are.

http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/comments/has_social_media_paid_off_with_improved_customer_satisfaction1/