digitalCMO.com

If All Marketers Were Geniuses, Digital Marketing Would Be Easier…

Josh Shatkin-Margolis, CEO of Magnetic, recently interviewed me for an iMedia series called All Marketers Are Geniuses.  (Perhaps he was looking to disprove that hypothesis.... ) Thanks Josh for the fun interview. I've posted it below, and it's also here. The area that has been most on my mind is reflected below in response to the question "how is online marketing falling short?"  It's pretty clear that we, as an industry, have gotten so stuck on getting more, faster, and better data that we ...

An RSVP to Google’s +1 party

Thanks to Covario's stellar PR and marketing team, Search Engine Land quoted part of the below here today. Below is my full-yet-brief take on Google's recent "+1" launch and impact to marketers. Net/net: marketers need not stress...the party has not started yet. But it could be rockin' when it does. Paid Search advertisers most likely  will see little or no impact from the “+1” in the short term, although the long term potential for “+1” as  an important lever could be very signific...

Convenient Ploy to Brag about Sidney

When I was born, my parents sent telegrams to family members who were overseas at the time. My oldest boy is 10. When he was born, we used our cell phones to call family to announce his arrival. Our middle boy is 7. I sent emails from a coffee shop near the hospital where he was born. Sidney, our youngest, was born yesterday. I posted on Facebook from my mobile device in the hospital room. My heart is bursting with joy over little Sidney, and my brain is just a  bit stunned by the ev...

Wet Towel on Remessaging?

"Oh, you wanted to talk to my wife, hold on let me get her for you." [...] "Oh honey! There's a towel banner on the internet, do you want any??"

Will Affiliate Marketing Disappear?

Disclaimer:  I have not thought a ton about affiliate marketing in years, since we launched the practice at eonMedia in 2003 and wound it down to focus on paid search only by 2004. Recently, I was engaged in a conversation about the future of affiliate marketing. I then did a bit of digging. I could be missing something, but I can't see affiliate marketing, in its present state at least, becoming a growth industry. In fact, I can see how it might cease to exist completely, at least in its...

Google’s Hedge?

As reported in BrandRepublic on 2/3, Google  will put more muscle around a fee-based enterprise level cloud-based web analytics solution. As many of you know, Google currently attracts a lot of smaller advertisers with it's free Google Analytics and has also continued to support the legacy Urchin advertiser-hosted software distributed through resellers. It's clear that with this decision, Google will address the top end of the market, currently dominated by Omniture/Adobe and CoreMetrics/IBM at...

Seattle Interview #3: Jeff Bell, NCT Ventures

Seattle’s Jeff Bell is investment partner at NCT Ventures, and talks with digitalCMO about his recent investment and exit from ClearSaleing, working in a remote office, his time at Microsoft and Chrysler, digital marketing, and other fun stuff.  This is part three of five in digitalCMO's Seattle interview series. digitalCMO: You are on the investment team at NCT Ventures, a VC firm. You are based in Seattle, and NCT is based in Columbus, Ohio. NCT is not well known in Seattle, can you tel...

Seattle Interview #2: Rand Fishkin, CEO SEOmoz

This is the second in a series of interviews with Seattle-area digital leaders. Last one was Chris Devore. Rand founded SEOmoz in 2004 in Seattle, where he still leads the company. Only on digitalCMO can you discover: How Rand thinks about  transparency, leadership, and hiring Annual revenues and margins of SEOmoz.org (a privately-held co.) Mean things and hard stuff How crappy is www.digitalCMO.com from an organic search perspective and what can I do about it? The interview belo...

Seattle Interview #1: Chris DeVore/ Founders Co-op

Chris DeVore co-founded Judy's Book and currently operates Founders Co-op, a early-stage venture fund and community of entrepreneurs in the Seattle area, focused on web-based and software services. Chris graciously agreed to share his thoughts on start-ups, capital, and innovation: digitalCMO: What inspired you to start Founders Co-op? Chris: In late 2007 my business partner (Andy Sack) and I sold our previous company, a venture-backed local search business called Judy's Book.  We knew ...

Two Wacky Lists for Managers and Analysts

First List (for Managers):  25 Oddball Interview Questions, from GlassDoor.  1. “If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?” Asked at Goldman Sachs. 2. “How many ridges [are there] around a quarter?” Asked at Deloitte. 3. “What is the philosophy of Martial Arts?” Asked at Aflac. 4. “Explain [to] me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years.” Asked at Boston Consulting. 5. “Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how we...