The biggest problem in marketing in the tech world today is that too many marketers do not know the first thing about marketing.
Digital marketers — who, as marketers, really should be cynical enough to know better — have fallen into an echo chamber of meaningless buzzwords.
First, the phrase “inbound marketing” was invented and popularized in the mid-2000s by HubSpot, a company that sells — of course — “inbound marketing software” and is receiving some bad publicity in the form of a book by former employee Dan Lyons that was released on April 5.
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As Lyons alleges and seems to imply, the company’s initial success seems to have been based on the promotion of the created term rather than its actual product:
HubSpot’s first hires included a head of sales and a head of marketing. Halligan and Dharmesh filled these positions even though they had no product to sell and didn’t even know what product they were going to make. HubSpot started out as a sales operation in search of a product.
Second, the phrase “content marketing” was largely established around the same time by Joe Pulizzi. He created the Content Marketing Institute, which sells — of course — “content marketing training,” as well as tickets to the Content Marketing World conference. And what is “content marketing?” Wikipedia’s definition (as of this moment of writing) is a textbook example of saying something without actually saying anything:
Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.
The use of these and other buzzwords has caused a new generation of marketers to enter the field without knowing even the basic terms and practices that underpin our industry. The result is that too many tech marketers are basing their work on faulty premises, hurting our profession and flooding the Internet with spammy “content.” To understand where the marketing world went wrong, let’s first compare how marketing departments operated before and after the mass adoption of the Internet.
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Google Trends
Imagine that it is the year 1996. What did traditional marketing departments think about? The four Ps. The promotion mix. Communications strategies. SWOT analyses. The five forces. Building brands. Then, by 2006, what did digital marketing teams think about? High Google rankings and more website traffic. Getting Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers. Keyword density. Building links.
Read the entire article where it was originaly published: Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong
Digital marketers — who, as marketers, really should be cynical enough to know better — have fallen into an echo chamber of meaningless buzzwords.
First, the phrase “inbound marketing” was invented and popularized in the mid-2000s by HubSpot, a company that sells — of course — “inbound marketing software” and is receiving some bad publicity in the form of a book by former employee Dan Lyons that was released on April 5.
Screen Shot 2016-04-01 at 21.54.50
As Lyons alleges and seems to imply, the company’s initial success seems to have been based on the promotion of the created term rather than its actual product:
HubSpot’s first hires included a head of sales and a head of marketing. Halligan and Dharmesh filled these positions even though they had no product to sell and didn’t even know what product they were going to make. HubSpot started out as a sales operation in search of a product.
Second, the phrase “content marketing” was largely established around the same time by Joe Pulizzi. He created the Content Marketing Institute, which sells — of course — “content marketing training,” as well as tickets to the Content Marketing World conference. And what is “content marketing?” Wikipedia’s definition (as of this moment of writing) is a textbook example of saying something without actually saying anything:
Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.
The use of these and other buzzwords has caused a new generation of marketers to enter the field without knowing even the basic terms and practices that underpin our industry. The result is that too many tech marketers are basing their work on faulty premises, hurting our profession and flooding the Internet with spammy “content.” To understand where the marketing world went wrong, let’s first compare how marketing departments operated before and after the mass adoption of the Internet.
Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 15.38.47
Google Trends
Imagine that it is the year 1996. What did traditional marketing departments think about? The four Ps. The promotion mix. Communications strategies. SWOT analyses. The five forces. Building brands. Then, by 2006, what did digital marketing teams think about? High Google rankings and more website traffic. Getting Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers. Keyword density. Building links.
Read the entire article where it was originaly published: Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong
