DJ Francis

Having been at this #martech thing for a minute, Scott's framing and reframing of marketing and martech both surprised / didn't surprise me one tiny bit. Since day one we've been asking "Is martech a thing?" We asked it so often that it became a joke of sorts. After all, if martech wasn't a thing, why on Earth were we building a brand around it? The CMO survey cited in Scott Brinker's post highlights for me, the core of what's going on in marketing today which is that you cannot do modern marketing without technology. It's like air at this point. No technology, no marketing. I'd bet that the 24.7% of CMOs reporting that their companies are not using marketing technology isn't a reflection of their competency or knowledge of their organization's stack but something much, much simpler. It's that MARTECH IS MARKETING - and for at least some of those CMOs, they don't care to make the distinction. And that's why we run the MarTech Conference and write on MarTech.org - because it's impossible today to "do marketing" without "marketing technology." Mike Pastore Chris Elwell Constantine von Hoffman Chris Wood Kim Davis https://lnkd.in/e9RFhYRs

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Health privacy is breached every day online. Most Americans don’t realize their Amazon info is being aggregated with Google searches, news browsing, FB/Instagram/TikTok posts & more. So our entire online experience, including health, is being sifted for marketing. Two LDI fellows, Ari Friedman and Matt McCoy, showed how hospitals and abortion clinics are just as likely as others to track users and pass on the info to aggregators. Check out this LDI piece that lays it out. #https://lnkd.in/eetqaPi3

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My recent Creative Differences newsletter, comparing human marketers' writing to LLMs got me a ton of responses. Several marketing friends made the entirely fair point that they just don't have much autonomy in the messaging and that it is difficult and unrewarding to push anything other than the most mundane writing through the system. That's fair. I should have been clear that the marketers know their market. Executives too often have a very uninspiring view of what good comms and good writing look like. Here, are two questions ... Is there a word - not a brand or trademark or new coinage, but a plain word - that you can find in your writing that your competitors do not use? Most likely you can't think of any. Carl Buehner famously wrote, "They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel." How do you want your readers to feel, reading your work? Intrigued, surprised, optimisitic? Even a simple set of installation instructions can impart a feeling: confidence, for example, that I can now straightforwardly achieve the task ahead. Rather than endlessly noodling on the exact phrasing that will convey the technical, or business, nuance of the product or service, pay some attention - even just a little - to how you want your readers to feel. https://lnkd.in/gz-KhmK2

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I really enjoyed Collette Masso del Llano's talk at #BrightonSEO recently. Collette spoke about: "Addressing the Gaps Between SEO and CX." What I liked about this session was that Collette (who says she's not an out-and-out SEO specialist) spoke about how it’s easy to sometimes fixate too much on the wrong SEO targets. This can cause marketers to lose sight of their broader marketing goals. Some key takeaways from the talk: It seems there’s quite a big gap between customer experience and SEO in a lot of businesses. It’s important for marketers to remember to focus more across the whole of the customer journey. Lots of marketers are missing huge opportunities by just looking at that top-of-funnel search intent, where you find high volumes of visitors who are only in the early "awareness" stage of their customer journey with your brand. Colette advised you to try to put more effort into engaging your audience across all stages of their customer journey, guiding them further along that journey. A key quote I wanted to share was: “Vanity metrics are driving SEO strategy.” Collette suggested thinking beyond the constraints of a traditional marketing funnel, and seeing it as more of a cycle. I really like that idea. Your audience is always going round in cycles, of course, so you need to be continually engaging with them. A few more highlights: “Retention strategy needs to be built into an SEO strategy. Only 44% calculate their customer retention rate, according to Semrush.” Collette also mentioned that the death of cookies is going to make the CRM the all-powerful beating heart of an organisation’s marketing. This sounded fascinating. Do you agree with that? It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years! I’d love to hear your thoughts on these points. Let me know in the comments.

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Give me ideas. Not email commercials. I don't want a datasheet. (Watch me hit the UNSUBSCRIBE button.) Michael Vickers has said it for years: "To become Preferred, you must build trust." David Jani of GetApp nets it out in this article: "Consumers are making it clear that they won't hesitate to disengage when bombarded with irrelevant or excessive marketing." So . . . stop doing it. Think outside the product sales push. *Be* the prospect. Deliver usable insight. "Become the emotional favorite in the markets you serve. Create authentic differentiation in a crowded marketplace," says Vickers. Here's the WHY from Destination CRM: https://lnkd.in/gaAuSsGj ##emailmarketing #salesdifferentiation #marketingtrustbuilding

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SafeGuard Privacy co-founder and CEO Richy Glassberg punctuates the end of Advertising Week with a blunt yet sage op-ed in AdExchanger. Read more about why he thinks CTV Advertising Sucks and what to do about it. Link to full article: https://lnkd.in/g88HH4mA #Adtech #Standards #CTV #TVAdvertising #AdvertisingROI

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What progress are you driving with that content? It’s the age-old question that the marketing team is always asked. The answer can be as simple as a metric to share or as complicated as intangible anecdotes trickling into your world over time. (Shoutout to you, brand marketers.) No matter what, here are four things that help set you up for success from the jump: 1️⃣ Hire great talent.  Shout out to Jasmine Oliveira, Allison Regna, and Helen Gardner as they put their talents into building an awesome new podcast, Off the VPN. 2️⃣ Create exceptional content.  That awesome podcast launched on July 10th. (It's not a subtle plug to check it out.) 3️⃣ Tie every piece of content to an outcome. We knew what we wanted to do with this show from the beginning. And Share Your Genius helped us bring it to life. 4️⃣ Partner with great teams.   Share Your Genius makes this possible because they are the best at what they do—creating and producing content that drives toward actual outcomes. They are a marketing team’s best friend. So it goes without saying that if you need real outcome-driving, content-engine-fueling content, you should talk to my friends at Share Your Genius. Tell Rachel Elsts Downey✨ I sent you.

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If you thought you could do away with all your content and SEO people now that Google is offering AI generated responses, think again. Unless you're ok with AI telling people to "jump off the Golden Gate Bridge" if they're depressed, "add non toxic glue" to their cooking, "run with scissors" for cardio exercise, and "smoke 3-4 cigarettes a day when pregnant" - I'm not kidding, check out other examples in this article: https://lnkd.in/gWT_vw6T I've spent almost 15 years working in content in some form. It's much more complex than many people think. But I don't need AI to create content, I need it to help solve critical, complex world issues, and I need it to replace the mundane manual labour that humans don't want to do. Leave art to the humans. Art is human connection. And, content is human connection at the core.

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The #FTC warns that hashed emails aren’t anonymous, especially when they are l (re)associated with consumers by other organizations in a non transparent manner. Translation: #HEMcookies, and opaque #IDnetworks that power most targeting, are at risk. DM me for advice. #cookies #cookietoast https://lnkd.in/gtZHW2Vq

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As the end of Season 4 of Experiment Nation's Interviews with Experimenters comes to a close, Tracy Laranjo 🍊 and I decided to take CRO interviews in a slightly different direction with a new series called CRO TMI. In this short, rapid-fire format, Rommil and Tracy answer questions that folks are often too shy to ask and share probably FAR MORE detail than we ought to – giving listeners unique insights into what it’s REALLY like to be an experimenter. We're as unfiltered as we can be while avoiding lawsuits. Should we do more of these? Let us know your thoughts below! Watch the full season of 11 episodes here: https://lnkd.in/gyUWCb5z #experimentation #cro #shorts

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My latest article on CMSWire asks CMOs, CEOs, and hiring agencies if industry experience is necessary or overrated. The deeper question I'm getting at here is: are too many great CMO candidates not even getting interviewed because they lack prior industry knowledge? Share your thoughts! Thanks to Sue Keith, Club CMO, Eric Pairitz, James (JD) Dillon, Doug Zarkin and Gaurav Bhatia for being a source! #cmo #marketing #humanresources

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What is SGE, and what does it mean for higher ed marketers? Search Generative Experience employs advanced machine learning techniques to produce organic search results and recommendations that are customized to the unique needs and preferences of each user. SGE "provides 'AI Overviews' in response to certain keyword searches in the form of interactive bubbles above traditional organic search results." Why should we care? Carnegie lays out exactly how higher ed institutions can use this tool to their advantage. #SGE #AI

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Getting your company in the news is getting tougher. 😔 With all the media layoffs - and entire publications shuttering - you have to work harder than ever to get results from the media outreach portion of your PR program. But - don't give up. All is not lost if you want to leverage public relations to help increase your company’s visibility. The question is: How can B2B companies and smaller businesses move forward to secure earned media coverage in this uncertain environment? If you're hitting a wall, my latest blog post (link in comments) shares some tips that are a little outside the box but may help you get a journalist's attention. And, if you've tried a unique approach that's worked well to get your company or client in the news, please share. #PRTips #publicrelations #mediarelations #B2BPR  

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In the latest MarTech.org podcast, which of course you knew existed, Mike Pastore sat down virtually with Canberk Beker for a "final verdict" on lead gen vs demand gen. Toward the end of the interview, Mike and Canberk discussed whether or not organizations can do both. Canberk advocates picking a lane and spoke to my own sense of why aligning incentives is one of the precursors to high levels of performance when he said "How really it is possible to do both if you are measured by only pipeline or if you are only measured by number of MQLs..." Sarah Caminker Weiss that's for you just in case you miss this post. The other big takeaway for me was that BRAND is back, baby. Find the MarTech.org podcast on all podcast platforms and YouTube. Watch or read here: https://lnkd.in/ejpNvF9S

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Well, my non-teardown of Chili Piper might be my best-performing post of all time. If you missed it, it's here: https://lnkd.in/gVkeSEZG I wasn't quite sure what to expect, so I'm pleasantly surprised. My goal was to create something I had never seen before, which was a bit maddening to do. It wouldn't have been possible without Alina Vandenberghe 🌶️'s candor and generosity with her time. (And I did kinda, ahem, borrow Josh Lowman 💈's video style, which he was very gracious about...thanks for that, Josh.) I do want to call out one tidbit out of the 1,637 tibdits in my somewhat packed asset. This header. When I think about positioning multi-product or muti-use case platform companies, I always look for what I call "the glue concept." It's a framing of the platform or product portfolio that makes it all stick together. I think this is a particularly excellent example of a glue concept that lands on all levels. - It's not grandiose - It speaks to a tangible problem that different buyer personas want to solve - It presents product use cases as a unified whole - The visual breakdown makes the whole thing easy to internalize Getting to the glue concept is one of the toughest challenges in positioning a platform product, especially one with disparate buyers like Chili Piper. Very nicely done.

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