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Scott Brinker

Scott Brinker

ion interactive
Scott Brinker is the president & CTO of ion interactive, a leading provider of post-click marketing software and services. He writes the Conversion Science column on Search Engine Land and frequently speaks at industry events such as SMX, Pubcon and Search Insider Summit. He chairs the marketing track at the Semantic Technology Conference. He also writes a blog on marketing technology, Chief Marketing Technologist.
  • Build and nurture an analytical culture across marketing
    0 comments 212 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-22

    Adele Sweetwood

    I’ve come to believe that organizational culture is the quintessential competitive advantage.

    That’s why, for all the tremendous changes underway in the world of marketing today, I’m most fascinated by the evolution of culture in marketing departments, as a function of new responsibilities, new technologies, and — most of all — new people with new skills and perspectives.

    My presentation earlier this week on agile marketing was, at its core, a talk about culture.

    One of the key trends in this cultural evolution of marketing is the entwining of analytics and analytical thinking into a discipline that must still continue to leverage a rich heritage of right-brain creativity and “softer”...

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  • Agile marketing for a world of constant change
    0 comments 644 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-19

    Today I’m giving a presentation at the Marketing Operations Executive Summit on agile marketing. Given the tremendous disruption in marketing and business today, I truly believe that embracing an agile approach to marketing management may be the single most valuable decision an organization can make.

    Here’s my slide deck, along with an essay version of my talk, that explains agile marketing and why you should seriously consider adopting it:

    Agile Marketing: Managing Marketing in a World of Constant Change

    Don’t panic, but… marketing is exploding.

    Seriously. Boom! Bam! Ka-pow!

    We’re wrestling with an explosion of ever-shifting touchpoints and channels where we have to connect with our audience. To call the social media landscape fragmented is like saying Sybil was, um, slightly unbalanced.

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  • Nationwide CMO credits marketing technologist
    0 comments 908 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-16

    Nationwide Insurance

    On the heels of Gartner’s recent confirmation that marketing technologists are proliferating within marketing departments, I came across this great example in an article in Insurance & Technology — Nationwide CMO: ‘I Have Double-Digit Million Dollars in IT Projects’.

    In an interview with associate editor Nathan Golia, Nationwide’s EVP and CMO Matt Jauchius acknowledged that marketing is now investing a...

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  • Gartner confirms 70% have chief marketing technologist
    0 comments 360 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-13

    70% Have a Chief Marketing Technologist

    Last year, Gartner found a surprising result — should I have been surprised? — from their high-tech marketing budget survey: 72% of their respondents indicated that there was a “chief marketing technologist” type role in their organization. While I’ve been predicting the rise of the marketing technologist for several years, that struck me as a spectacularly rapid adoption rate.

    Had we reached a tipping point?

    Now, last week, they released...

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  • What do you mean by marketing as a science?
    0 comments 550 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-06

    Marketing: Science or Art?

    I’m fascinated by this chart that was included in a recent report by Eloqua and BtoB Magazine, Defining the Modern Marketer: From Ideal to Real. Based on a survey of 556 B2B marketing professionals from companies of all sizes and industries, the report reveals current perceptions about what “modern marketing” is today — and should be tomorrow.

    At first glance, the tall blue and red peaks in the middle pop out, showing that the largest percentage of marketers believe that modern marketing is an equal blend of science and art. As both a humanist and a technologist — I know, strange mix — I smile because I do believe such a balanced and integrated worldview is the basis of modern marketing...

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  • “Brand debt” and a gap in the agile marketing manifesto
    0 comments 589 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-03

    Brand Debt in Agile Marketing

    Agile marketing is often celebrated for speed — empowering marketing teams to get more ideas out into the market faster. But while that is often a valuable side benefit, it’s not one of the key principles behind agile marketing. In fact, putting too much emphasis on speed can be detrimental to marketing’s larger mission.

    The heart of agile marketing is really its adaptability. By breaking ideas into small pieces and using short work cycles to iterate and...

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  • How formal should your marketing experiments be?
    0 comments 475 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-01

    Marketing Experiment Brief

    How formal should your marketing experimentation programs be?

    That was the question I was asking myself looking at the above “test definition brief” that was included in a report jointly produced by Google and the Marketing Leadership Council: The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing.

    The report — which I think is terrific overall for a behind-the-scenes look at how several larger enterprises are integrating digital marketing more holistically into their organizations — raises the concern that marketing experiments need to be better structured to make their results...

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  • Marketing data: exploration vs. confirmation
    0 comments 701 reads
    Posted on 2013-02-25

    Marketing Data: Exploration vs. Confirmation

    There is tremendous excitement around data-driven marketing. A whole catalog of data-related phrases are echoing throughout the marketing world: big data, data mining, data science, data exchanges, data management platforms, controlled experiments (“big testing“), analytics, metrics, dashboards, etc.

    But the data driving all these different activities isn’t quite the same. Or, more accurately, the contexts in which marketers use that data aren’t the same.

    Different data-driven activities change how you should think about data, manage it, and ultimately derive value from it. An important axis...

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  • The blurring of agencies, software vendors, and IT shops
    0 comments 586 reads
    Posted on 2013-02-14

    Service Providers in the EMM Stack

    The Jordan Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI), a leading investment bank in the marketing and media space, recently released a new report on the enterprise marketing management (EMM) stack. They start by noting that from 2010-2012, four companies (“The Big Four”) have invested over $20 billion in marketing technology M&A: Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce.

    But they quickly point out that some of the biggest disruption resulting from these acquisitions hasn’t been in the enterprise software space — it’s been in the marketing services space. “Their world has...

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  • Data is marketing’s gateway drug to software fluency
    0 comments 529 reads
    Posted on 2013-02-13

    The Circle of Life of Data


    In observing the language that CIOs and CMOs alike keep using around the big data bubble — where both parties seem ready to acknowledge that marketing is in the hot seat for making productive use of data — I’m starting to conclude one of two things:

    1. “Data” is a euphemism for all application-level marketing technology.
    2. There’s an illusion that data-driven marketing can thrive independent of any deeper engagement with the technology that generates or harnesses this data.

    If it’s a euphemism, I guess it’s a clever way for the marketing organization to boost its internal technical...

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