I had the opportunity to sit down with Webmaster Radio last week at SES to discuss the rising importance of content marketing to SEO as well as how the role of “marketer” needs to change.  The shift in search and seo is indicative of the larger shift within the digital marketing community.  I also got a chance to discuss how our educational system is not designed to produce the type of marketers and engineers that are needed for the future and what can be done to change that.

It was really interesting to see how many content marketing companies are starting to pop up within the search community, specifically trying to put numbers to words.  After all, creativity without conversion = 0!  Listen to the interview over at webmaster world.

It’s commencement time around the nation when newly minted alumni begin their quest for the golden fleece, the first job. Time to get real. But is education truly preparing students for this brave new world, one where measurement of productivity is polished to a high gloss and finds its way to the balance sheet?

Engineers produce things to be sold, salesmen sell things, and business students are taught to understand  and drive the metrics of business. But what happens to English majors? Where do they go with their diplomas in hand in this capitalist land of uber-productivity, which is after all, one of the things that separates the US from other countries.

Moore’s law describes a driving force of technological and social change, yet the university tends to move at glacial speed steeped in tradition as deep as Dante’s Inferno. And  the educational glaciers are melting with the modern heat of demand, yet supply is not there. Today, an imbalance exists between skills being taught and what business requires –  all driven ever more quickly by technological innovation, as Moore described.

Some universities see the handwriting on the wall (and the puddle of water at their feet)  and are looking for innovative ways to leverage their current curriculum in order to produce graduates with the skills needed for today’s competitive environment. Pelin and I spoke last week at the University of the Pacific, the oldest university in California, to a room filled with university deans, department chairs and professors and students interested to hear our views on what industry needs from these new workers. Since the earliest days of web analytics, we have understood that “creativity without conversion equals zero.” English majors need to be able to place a value on the words they create, in a business context. Their work needs to translate to the bottom line and it must be measureable. We presented our idea of an innovative Content Engineering curricula, a hybrid set of courses which span disciplines and schools, designed for the content creators in our online future. (Maybe explain what content engineer is?)

These Content Engineers understand the persuasive value of words; why people buy; the technology enablers, and will be able to establish and optimize objectives which are measured by business goals, and to effect that change with their new skill set learned in university. We are at the dawn of a “relevance revolution,” and instead of following, US education needs to lead the way to maintain international competiveness. Higher education can’t continue to teach the same way it has for the last millennia — not with technology and the speed of business continuing to increase. And as Americans, we are uniquely suited to undertake this challenge and to excel. The new English majors are not your grandmothers’ bard for sure!

We’re optimistic that leaders in higher education see what industry and students need in the future, but that only time will tell as the glaciers continue to drip, drip, drip. We thank our hosts at the University – Deans Dr. Tom Krise, College of the Pacific;  Dr. Lewis Gale, Eberhardt School of Business; and  Dr. Ravi Jain, School of Engineering and Computer Science, for allowing us to share our vision with their facility, staff and students.

As the web becomes cluttered with more data and spam generated by black hat games and content farms, relevant Content becomes more critical. The key is findability. Can your content be found? There are many ways to insure good results but there’s a lack of formal education around the new media and just how to do that. Though Web Analytics has been around for a decade, few really use it to optimize their work and we know why and it needs to be addressed by higer education and creating relevant graduates. But things are changing so quickly, so how do you that in this environment and what is the role of higher education in setting the foundation, and giving tools to future content creators?

I’ve been talking about a new disciple that I’ve called Content Engineering for about five years, and now I’m happy to say that higher education is addressing the issue head-on. Pelin and I are speaking to the students and facility, hosted by the Deans of the Business, Engineering and Liberal Arts schools at the University of the Pacific to share our vision of how Social Media is changing marketing and those of us who create content. What’s key is that UOP recognizes that students and future Content Engineers will need critical skills across disciplines – English & Communications; Business and Engineering. We expect to see more schools and universities create programs that address these requirements in the near future.

This is a good start.

It’s sure great to talk to real people for perspective. We don’t do it nearly enough. Those of us in Silicon Valley spend too much time talking to each other and obsess endlessly about the buzz du jour – Twitter’s analytics;  Facebook’s privacy; the newest browser; Google’s new search algorithm and the games SEOs play. We talk about Social CRM, Social Selling, Customer 2.0. viral, Freemium, brand  and conversions.  But it’s not the real world.

My partner Pelin and I were invited to present a keynote recently for a Strategic Marketing Conference hosted by Cornell University at the beautiful and historic FDR Presidential Library, a few hours from NYC, in the Hudson Valley where the autumn colors where in their full glory. We presented our topic, and a recurring them about how marketing is dramatically changing to attendees from around the country – professors; business leaders, students and entrepreneurs.

We were honored to present our observations about the rise of Inbound Marketing, and some of our experience working with “cutting edge firms”, like Eightfold Logic, ViralHeat, and InsideView each pioneering these new concepts. We regularly speak at technical conferences, but we thought this might be a bit different as it had a general and mostly non technical audience. A few minutes into our presentation we asked a series of questions to find out more about the attendees, “How many of you use web analytics” – most hands went up.  That’s good we thought. “How many of you use links on your web site, and know how to link”?  This time almost no hands were raised and few knew how to link, and NO ONE knew the value search engines place on the right links!

How could that be? Surely they MUST understand the value of linking? Well, no, they didn’t. I’ve been creating marketing applications for 15 years and have to constantly  be reminded about the adoption myth. The one where I think everyone uses our products, and they don’t. While the rate of adoption will certainly be more rapid than it’s been in the past, the rest of the world is not living in our tech bubble. The real world is doing just fine and it’s good for me to get out and be reminded not drink too much of my own bath water. While a link is ubiquitous, its value is not understood by most. And that’s the lesson I relearned during my visit to Cornell. In future posts I’ll talk about how we can accelerate adoption. What role colleges and universities need to play, and what marketing skills will look like in the not too distant future.

The ZiegenBock beer is going down smooth. Austin airport is a great place to wait for a flight. And, Ray’s Chuck Wagon at Asleep at the Wheel surely serves the finest briquette of beef in any airport. Dry and spicy. Country rock, courtesy of a SXSW (the locals say “South – By”) band helps me collect my thoughts about the day here.

This is the first time for me attending the show. And it will no doubt be the first of many. Austin is Portland meets Texas – hip, clean, smart and technology enabled with a little barbeque sauce. SXSW takes over town attracting (perhaps) hundreds of thousands to the festival.

 I spoke at session titled “Is too Much Math Killing Marketing” and debated the point with UK Ad Agency chief Mike Teasdale who took the position that it has. Mike’s a brilliant ad guy, fast, and with biting humor so I had to be careful not to get cut up in the knife fight on stage. In Bush country, I made my points – with rhetorical shock and awe (I had to work in a Bush-ism). Actually, we’re mostly in agreement but for the sake of a good show each of us labored (or laboured as Mike would say) to support a pure position – me arguing for left brain and Mike right.

 We didn’t really have any expectations – would this group come hear our thoughts at 9:30 in the morning on the last day of the show after four long nights of SXSW parties – the other reason people seem to go, or would we speak to a big empty room?  The answer came in loud in clear, that despite the time there was a morning thirst for an answer to the question, and we gave it our all in front of a full ballroom at the Hilton.

 So here’s my summary. One of Mike’s main points is that data becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions. He made fun of some of Eric Petersons‘ work around measuring visitor engagement. Now, I know and love Eric (we worked together in several firms – Web Trends and WebSideStory),  however  the audience made up mostly of interactive agency types, seemed to agree with Mike that it’s too complex.  He quoted Ogilvy and Dave Trott, “it’s better to be interesting and wrong than dull and right”.

 And the battle lines were drawn –  Math, Reason, Data, Left brain; English, Instinct, Imagination, Right brain. Too much math stops us from taking giant leaps, “it takes imagination to take a leap into the future”, he said. There where hoots from the crowd supporting the position.

 I started the counter point with the question “What is the Sound of Creativity When No One Can Hear It”? And quickly counter punched that the world today has changed as the internet provides us the tools and the empirical data to optimize. I followed up with the observation that, “we’re all becoming Content Engineers”. I’ve seen this movement for some years – one part creative director and what part data analyst.  Here’s what I said back in 2005 to ZDnet about the topic. This new breed needs to monitor, measure then maximize. Check out our SXSW presentation here.

 But the bottom line to my math is this, creativity without conversion = zero. And hopefully on that point I had a KO! Regardless, the debate stirred the pot and seems to have triggered interesting tweets – #toomuchmath, and blog posts. I would be curious to hear your thoughts?

I’m fascinated by change, as change is the only constant. And change is good for ADA (attention-deficit advantaged) people like me – which is probably the reason I’ve spent so my much time in the tech biz. However, it seems the rate of change is accelerating. Gordon Moore surely had it right.

Next week I’ll be in Austin at the huge international music, film and interactive confab, SXSW addressing the question, Has Math Killed Marketing Creativity? I’m debating the topic with classic ad guys who think it has (at least that’s the position they take for a good show). Guess what side I’ll take? Math is key to marketing in the future. Move over finance dept, as it’s now critical to build an entire “Culture of Measurement” because we now can. I list some lowest hanging fruit below.

Analytics drive smarketing: sales and marketing alignment

We work in a “smarketing” world where the lines between sales and marketing are blurring as it’s now possible to optimize every conversion step of the lead across the company, from the initial reach campaign – to close and everything in-between. But marketing automation, web analytics, social media, and CRM tools are useless without both process and operational change. Too few ask, “What are my goals, and how will I know when I reach them”?

These new applications force marketing and sales alignment to be more deliberate. Math doesn’t do well with fuzziness. Key questions need to be addressed – what is the definition of an inquiry or lead? Is a lead different from a sales ready lead? What is the definition of an opportunity, who owns it, and how can it be optimized? Who’s responsible, marketing or sales? Maybe we need a Chief Smarketing Officer?

It’s a fact that these technologies enable sales to act marketing-like, while marketing can be held more accountable (like sales) – measured with quotas. But our process lags behind the promise enabled by these applications. There is good news, however, as early adopters are seeing dramatic ROI numbers. What should the rest do? That depends, and I have a few thoughts on this topic for future blogs.

Analytics drive product direction and user engagement

Smarketing is a start, but the product lifecycle can be optimized through analytics as well, and forward leaning companies are asking questions like – What are my users’ behavior and where do they get stumped? In a cloud environment we easily can monitor individual and aggregate behavior, and like a web site, optimize their engagement within the product using the analytic tools of our trade. We can even “campaign” to these users, using marketing automation tools and scoring to present offers at unique “up sell points” during the user session (but let’s be careful here). While this is powerful for converting prospects, the data is also key for customer retention. It’s much more effective to keep a customer than to replace them. An engaged customer is a happy customer.

Analytics drive new distribution models: Freemium & B to I

Marketing in a B to B environment is undergoing a transformation as (mostly) gone are the days of field marketing (expect for in the largest companies like Oracle) with their Vegas events and golf junkets. Behold a new era of marketing that some are calling B to I, or “Business to Individual”, marketing where B to B marketers use the tricks of their consumer marketing cousins. The Freemium distribution model is one of those, and it too is driven by analytics. We know that the Freemium model has shown great effectiveness in the B to C long tail environment, but how will it do in the B to B sector? Logmein and LinkedIn suggest the answer.

New tools are creating a transformative culture of measurement. Best practices are emerging. I hope you check back here often as we share our latest thoughts and observations.