Hitmetrix - User behavior analytics & recording

Changes at The Hub

If you’re a regular reader of The Hub, you’ve probably noticed a new name above some recent articles. That would be me, Kim Davis, the website’s new editor, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks getting my feet under the desk here in New York, and getting baptized by a fire-hose of marketing technology information at Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City.

My recent background has been in editing sites which covered Internet for the enterprise and software-as-a-service—both topics which required significant coverage of the ways in which business is being revolutionized by cloud computing, big data and analytics, and the mobile environment. 

Marketing is key to business success, of course, and I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be a modern marketer. Everyone now recognizes (and if they don’t, they should) that we’re no longer in an environment where one-way channels of communication are designed to distribute sales pitches to the largest audience possible, and where the one success metric is conversion. 

We’re caught, rather, in an intricate, multi-channel network of omni-directional conversations, where messages—and even products—are increasingly crafted and refined by customers themselves, and where consistent, positive engagement with the market, across the devices and channels it chooses, is a prerequisite to achieving a brand’s long-term business goals.

In a sense, marketers aren’t in the driving seat any more; customers are. That can be scary, but it’s also the launchpad for unprecedented creativity and innovation. As long as marketers have the right tools for the job. But how can you find the right tools for the job when, by some estimations, there are at least 2,000 options? 

That’s where The Hub comes in.

Our mission, as now see it, is to be a critical resource for decision-makers on  marketing technology, taking the guesswork out of understanding the important players and products in each marketing technology sector. 

That doesn’t just mean we’ll stop reporting the news, but it does mean taking a deeper dive into key solutions, looking at proffers from innovative vendors, and talking to marketers about which tools work for them. In practice, we’ll be focusing on a series of topics we’ve identified as essential for the modern marketer. We will be profiling marketing technology companies and their services on an ongoing basis, updating based on new features and the passage of time since we last checked in.

Examples include the marketing cloud, marketing automation, mobile marketing, and social media marketing (both paid and organic), as well as the analytics that support them and help define success. Of course these topics overlap, and we’ll be tracing the way tools can help make the vital connections between identifying customers, creating a valued experience for them across devices and channels, and deploying metrics which help refine both the targeting and the experience.

As readers of The Hub, we know you’re already embarked on an amazing journey. I hope you’ll come to regard us as an indispensable guide along the way to your destination.

Total
0
Shares
Related Posts