5 Ways Marketing Has Evolved in a Digital Environment

March 31, 2014 By

Whether you are seeking a new career in marketing or want to move up in your current position, ongoing education is one of the greatest advantages you can give yourself. The ability to know in advance what new trends will drive your industry, what skills your potential employers are looking for, and what kind of messaging your future audience will best respond to.

In the last decade, marketing has evolved dramatically. While a number of things have remained relatively constant – people are still driven by the same needs and desires – the methods by which we connect with them has changed drastically. That’s why it’s so important to understand the kind of divide between what you read in your marketing textbooks and what you’ll be working with in a live working environment.

Below are five of the ways that marketing has changed the most in a largely digital economy

1. Audiences Are Better Informed Than Ever Before

Marketing departments learned quickly after the rise of the Internet-economy in the late 1990’s that information is no longer the easily controlled commodity it once was.

Everyone buying anything does their research. Whether it’s a consumer explaining how many megapixels he wants in his next camera or a patient outlining how WebMD helped him self-diagnose a rare tropical disease, professionals are forced to contend with the wealth of information online like never before.

Simply out-explaining someone will never work. Instead you need to earn their trust and show that you are WORTH listening to.

2. Messages Must Be Earned Not Bought

Which is where number two comes in. In the past, you could earn trust through pure recognition. People trust things they are familiar with and so if they saw forty-five Coca Cola ads a day, they would trust it as a better tasting brand than the generic competitors.

Today, because consumers are better informed and see something north of 300 individual ad messages every day, you can’t buy their trust. You have to earn it, and this is done through providing valuable, actionable information or content to them in your marketing campaigns. Free eBooks, video courses, downloads, and blog posts – the stuff that makes people want to learn more from a brand is what will earn that trust.

3. Competition is Lighter, Faster, and More Creative

Major corporations can’t buy their way to the top of every search listing and every marketing channel as easily as they can offline. Online, a little guy can have a clever idea, release it into the wild and watch it go viral in a way that can’t be matched offline

That injectability is unique to the digital economy, and it makes for some of the most unique and entertaining marketing campaigns ever created. It also makes it a more competitive field than ever before.

4. Segmentation Has Reached an All Time High

When magazines and newspapers were the pinnacle of broadcast messaging, ads were matched to demographics on a very wide basis. Car companies would sell their sleekest, fanciest cars in the business section and golf magazines because probably their target demographic was among the readers.

That hasn’t changed, but we can dig a LOT deeper online. Facebook advertising, Google’s Adwords PPC platform, keyword targeting, and dozens of other tools you can use to break down your audience online lead to ultra-targeting that strips away the unwanted viewers and focuses only on those who are likely to buy from you.

5. Creativity Drives Innovation In Unexpected Ways

Finally, there is the sheer breadth of options that a digital environment creates. The Internet is a sandbox with unlimited resources and tools that allows marketeers to create things that no one has ever seen before. Viral video campaigns, interactive campaign websites, massive information repositories – these are tools that would have been nearly impossible offline, at least at that kind of scale.

Online your imagination is the limit. For a prospective candidate to a marketing position that’s a very good thing. Your ability to show creativity in past projects and future endeavors will help you stand out in a way that, while always important, wasn’t always as visible in the past.

Digital tools haven’t changed what marketing is or what it can do but it has changed how we interact with our audiences, the budgets for large campaigns, and the turnaround time on something as simple as a product announcement. Gone are the days of the multi-million dollar year-long preparation for a single announcement. Things are faster, lighter, sleeker, and more unpredictable than ever, and for someone like, eager to get into the industry, it means more opportunity to stand out from your peers.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozen countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Digital

How to Measure the Value of a Lead in a B2B Setting

March 25, 2014 By

If you’re looking to expand your horizons as a marketer, inbound marketing is an excellent tool to master. Marketing is equal parts art and science and now more so than ever before. In a digital environment, the tactics you learn in school and that you will apply in your future career (or your current one if you are just starting) are increasingly inbound.

Instead of blasting a message as loud as you can to every prospect in a database, you will carefully craft website content, blog posts, social media updates, and more that provide real value to those prospects. The concept isn’t new but the execution and our ability to measure the results is revolutionary in the field of marketing.

Yet it can pose a problem for a lot of marketing teams that are accustomed to measuring lead value in terms of their readiness to buy. A lead traditionally was someone who had shown very real interest in purchasing a product. It was a rare thing and a very valuable thing, often quantifiable down to the penny based.

Inbound marketing changes that by adding more steps to the top of the funnel and requiring a much larger output on behalf of the marketing team. Instead of blasting a message about the benefits of a product you sell to a list you bought from a third party broker or in a newspaper or magazine that matches your target demographic, you will now create authoritative content with little or NO selling points. Instead of convincing someone to call you, you build a level of trust in them that will eventually lead to that phone call.

When entering the marketing field or studying its continuing evolution, this can make lead valuation more complicated than it once was, and it can be a real stumbling block when starting a new career.

Measuring Value in an Inbound Environment

But despite the challenges that an inbound strategy brings to assigning value to any one lead (let alone determining when it’s okay to finally pitch your products or pass the lead to a sales rep), leads are still very much a quantifiable commodity.

While the philosophy behind inbound marketing and the new school of digital thought leadership in general forces you, to some degree, to think about value offered first and lead scoring second, that doesn’t mean you can’t create a rubric that will break down what each of those leads you generate is really worth.

Here are some things to consider when doing this:

  • Activity – How active is the lead in question? While a single “contact” form submission related to a product request is a big deal, is that the only contact the lead ever made? If it’s been six months and they haven’t responded to emails or returned to your site since, lead value is lower than if they continue to return daily to read your new blog posts, tweet at your company’s profile, and download new eBooks you release.
  • Position in the Funnel – As soon as possible, at least loosely define the funnel your company’s website uses to move a prospect into the lead cycle and closer to becoming a buyer. From offers that provide legitimate value to useful tools that solve problems for your prospects, know where someone is located and how likely a lead at that level is to convert to a buyer.
  • Decision Making Power – If a lead has downloaded five eBooks and contacted you twice, it looks pretty good on paper, but take into consideration the decision making power of that lead. Is it someone with purchasing authority at another company, or is it an intern doing research for their boss? You can’t always tell the difference, but when you can, it will impact the resources you expend to chase a lead.
  • Reach of the Lead – One of the best parts about inbound marketing is that a good lead doesn’t even have to buy something from you. Someone might download four or five of your eBooks and never once place an order or hire you for your services. But they might also share those eBooks with colleagues or recommend you to someone who WILL purchase from you. If this happens, that lead, regardless of their own buying behavior becomes a golden opportunity.

When you take these five things into consideration, you will start to understand how leads are assigned value and how you can create new opportunities when you take a new position or are studying the field of marketing.

There is no hard and fast formula and even within one company or one demographic, you might see some leads that shouldn’t be worth anything become massive opportunities. Never let yourself be blinded by the numbers on a page, but at the same time, teach yourself to see these patterns and you’ll be better suited to target and capitalize on the right leads coming through a website.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozens countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony founded two companies in content development and marketing. Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Inbound Tagged With: , , ,

Inbound Marketing Theory in Traditional Campaigns

January 2, 2014 By

Marketing has changed more in the last decade than in any time since the 1950s. The digital revolution has quickly modernized nearly every medium used to reach a target audience and the changes won’t stop any time soon.

One of the biggest changes is the concept of inbound marketing. Inbound or content marketing is different in a number of ways from traditional brand marketing or direct sales because it focuses on building a relationship with prospects and creating a path they can follow of their own accord to purchase services or products.

For those preparing to start a career in the marketing field or for those interested in moving up in their current position, this is the future of most digital campaigns, even for large companies that would otherwise throw money at channels with the largest audience like TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.

What Inbound Changes in Marketing

Nothing about inbound or the tactics it entails is new to marketing. The same psychological pressures are present to drive action from a prospect and the same channels can be used, but the methodology is different, and it’s all because of what digital channels allows us to do.

In the past, it was either incredibly hard or incredibly expensive to reach a target audience where they were most likely to be. You could define a demographic and match the magazines they read or the TV shows they watched, but if you wanted to only show your ads to 28 year old women in Nebraska, it wasn’t quite so simple. So you had to broadcast as much as possible about your brand as loudly as possible to make an impact. People needed to remember that brand when they hit the grocery story or picked up the phone to call a plumber.

Today, people proactively get information on the Internet. In fact, nearly 57% of the sales process is complete by the time someone enters a funnel, almost entirely because of the Internet. People research products, determine what they need, and then start looking for the specific product that will fit their needs, based on the research they completed.

Inbound marketing does two things.

  1. It provides that information when someone is researching a problem they have.
  2. It builds trust with YOUR brand so that when they are finished researching, they will think of you first.

But instead of selling your product or service proactively, pushing them to choose you over XYZ Co., you build a relationship. This requires a keen understanding of the individual you will market your product to, but also the problems they have and the solutions they are seeking.

How Inbound Is Changing Marketing Online

There is still a place for traditional marketing strategies. Businesses still spend millions on Super Bowl ads, billboards, magazine placements, and radio spots. But they also create Facebook Pages, produce YouTube videos, and run company blogs loaded with useful articles about problems they KNOW their audience has.

They do research about their target audience, identify key demographics, and create solutions that will fit the specific needs of those individuals where they are most likely to need them.

And they do it with less investment upfront, and a greater payoff down the line. HubSpot reported in their 2012 State of Inbound Marketing that more than 70% of companies with a blog that is updated weekly make a sale through that blog. This is the kind of payoff you couldn’t see in the past strictly with content like a company newsletter.

Using Inbound Methods in the Future

The importance of this methodology cannot be overstated, even as it just starts to make its way into the curriculum of most major marketing programs. Because the Internet is near instant and because we can interact with our prospects through so many channels at so many points during their day, it’s possible to build a real relationship with someone.

As a marketing professional, it will increasingly become your job to recognize how to create these relationships for your employer and use them to leverage into buying intent. If you can do this with blog posts, videos, white papers, eBooks, emails, and the occasional tweet, your skills will become that much more relevant in a 21st century marketing landscape.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozen countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Inbound Tagged With: , , ,

How the Age of Mad Men Would Perceive Facebook

December 26, 2013 By

To say technology has changed how we look at marketing is an understatement. The last 20 years has been a whirlwind as Internet technology and accessibility has changed how big and small companies alike create, budget, and implement advertising and marketing campaigns.

Small brands can suddenly reach the same audience is massive conglomerates through micro-targeting, pay-per-click, and social media. It’s happened before. TV, and radio before it, offered huge upheavals in marketing technologies, but never this fast.

And yet a lot of what we learn in school and come out ready to apply to new campaigns is from a different age. A time when technology moved a bit slower and audiences were more homogenous. Things have changed and if the godfathers of marketing were to see Facebook today they’d likely be more than a little miffed at how it all operates.

Modern Marketing is a Personal Affair

In the early and mid-20th century, marketing wasn’t necessarily new but it was certainly exciting and the ideas being bandied about were often revolutionary for their time. At the same time, there were far fewer restrictions on what you could say and how you could say it.

Cigarette salesmen could claim health benefits. Toothpaste became a massive industry because of a white lie. Common practices, like steaming beer bottles, became major marketing taglines. It was a wild-west of sorts and that allowed some of the brightest minds of the time to come out with outlandish and incredibly effective new techniques for marketing.

We still use many of those today. If you are studying the field and preparing for a career in it, you understand this all too well. Psychology, human buying behaviors, and social pressures are all closely linked to the product-purchase experience. Those things don’t change. But our perceptions of them do.

Facebook and marketing campaigns built-around it and similar platforms rely on a personal relationship. Brands build partnerships with individuals, micro-targeting demographics and experiences, and creating a dialogue that generates trust. That trust will one day lead to leverage in a sale, but not right away. It’s a slower process using much faster technologies, and it works extremely well because of that.

Some Things Never Change

While Facebook relies on sharing, commenting, and the perception that YOU care as much about your Fans as they care about you or your product, there are certain things that have never changed about the human buying experience. Things like:

  • Social Proof – Humans thrive because of the social dynamic we instill upon ourselves. Following a group is safer than going it alone. Marketers know this and use it in their campaigns to drive action from someone who might fear being left out of the group. In an inherently social environment this works even better on Facebook.
  • The Power of Scarcity – The rarer something becomes, the more valuable it is in the eyes of your prospects. It was true in 1960 and its true today. Except instead of Cadillacs and cigars, today’s scarce commodities tend to be digital. Information is the true equalizer in a world of easy access to near anything.
  • The “We” Mentality – People want to feel part of a group, but more importantly, once they are part of that group they will act consistent to the group’s shared ethos. In a social setting like Facebook, this works so well as you create a shared dialogue that teaches Fans to become customers.

When you can trigger these states of mind in your audience, they will respond the same as a man in the 50’s did to a automobile ad or a child did to the adverts in the back of a comic book. The format, delivery, and speed of interaction may have changed, along with the methods used to reach people, but the psychology and reasons these things work has not, one of the reasons marketing’s 50’s masterminds are still relevant today.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozen countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: , , , ,

Five Marketing Truths from Philip Kotler

December 5, 2013 By

Human beings are hard wired for marketing. We are constantly selling ourselves, our ideas, and our needs to one another, and those who are most effective at convincing others are often leaders in society.

But marketing as an art and a topic of study is relatively new. Only in the 20th century did it become a staple in business schools and bookstore shelfs as it is today. And one of the first men to champion marketing as something to master was Philip Kotler.

Kotler has written more than 55 books and 150 articles including Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, and Control, a textbook so prolific that if you are in school now, you probably have it on your shelf or in your book bag as you read this. So there is no arguing the influence of a man who introduced the idea of marketing ideas, causes, places and people – the backbone of the modern branding movement.

This is a marketing thought leader if ever there was one. So for those that have yet to read Kotler’s books or who are a little rusty out of school, let’s take a closer look at five truths about modern marketing and how they apply to everything we promote, sell, and market today, even in a recently digitalized economy.

“You should never go to battle before you’e won the war on paper. The good news is that Marketing takes an hour to learn. The bad news is that it takes a lifetime to master.”

Anyone can market a product. Brainstorm an idea, put it down on paper, and make a plan. That’s step one and it takes no time.

Testing that plan, evaluating how it performs, and mastering an understanding of your audience? That will take a lifetime to do.

It’s why you never stop reading and learning, even when your education is complete.

“Every business is a service business. You are not a chemical company. You are a chemical services business. Does your service put a “smile” on the customer’s face?”

This is one of Kotler’s biggest teachings. The sale is not about the products you sell, but the experience you give your customers.

If you can make people happy and stand out as the best partner in their success, they will choose your brand over another every time.

“I don’t care what happened to your profits. Have you improved your share of the customer’s mind and heart this year? It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them.”

This is huge, especially in modern marketing where every business has a competitor who can beat them on price.

Why do people buy Apple products when they cost more and often have fewer features than competitors? Because those products tell a story their customers want to hear, and are representative of a brand they want to be part of.

There’s something magical about an iPhone or Macbook that other devices cannot match.

“The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.”

Price wars will hurt your company, especially if you have a quality product. Instead you need to stand out on everything else – create relationships and build a brand that transcends the idea of pricing.

If you understand this and how to use modern, digital tools to make it a reality, you will be a hot brand yourself when it comes time to apply for new jobs.

“Every company should work to obsolete its product line…before competitors do. The major cause of company failure is company success.”

It’s easy to become conservative and work to preserve what you already have. But in a digital economy, this is more dangerous than ever before.

It’s how companies like Blockbuster and Circuit City disappeared so fast. They didn’t work to innovate and grow before their competitors pushed them into obsolescence.

If you showcase your ability to think outside of proverbial boxes for your company, you will stand out as a valuable asset in the constant push to stay one step ahead of competitor innovation.

As you can imagine, this is a man who has had a huge impact on how we think about marketing today, and he still does. If you’re not reading his work, start, but don’t stop there. The best thing about marketing is that it is always evolving.

From experiments being run by marketers to the development of new understandings in social psychology, how we interact with customers and brands is constantly changing. The better you understand those changes, the better prepared you will be to deal with them and excel as you pursue a career in marketing.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozens countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony founded two companies in content development and marketing and currently provides private consulting services for the online-side of small and medium sized business’s marketing campaigns.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Finding a Niche in a Hyper Specialized Economy

November 29, 2013 By

Technology has revolutionized much of our economy, but some fields more than others. Marketing, for example, has changed immensely. Where information was once scarce and required days of research and evaluation to acquire, it is now plentiful – so much so that you can be overwhelmed quickly if you are not careful.

To compensate for the torrents of data you can pull from Google Analytics, SEO research tools, Facebook, YouTube and more, marketing has become an incredibly niche-oriented industry. Niche-oriented marketing is not new, but today’s economy is hyper-specialized to the point that it is a practical necessity.

For those seeking a career in the marketing industry or who want to move up in its ranks, that hyper specification will become a very important part of how you brand your own expertise. If you haven’t yet, now is the time to start thinking about where your expertise lies, what you will focus on and how you will focus on it.

How Niche Is Too Niche?

A niche is any category within a vertical that has a similar audience. It can be broad, such as “sports and athletics” or it can be very specific like “fantasy football”. The chances are, no matter what niche you are looking at, there will be thousands of websites to sift through and choose from – many people to interview and industry terms to internalize as you come to understand what drives that market.

More importantly, there is a very real overlap between many hyper specialized fields now because of how people use technology to search for that information. We no longer have to break them up into individualized categories.

Men who like football also read books. Women who go to nail salons also go mountain biking. The lines are thinner now because we can drill down deep into the data to see what people are interested in and how they spend their time, and more importantly, their money. No niche is too niche.

How to Brand Yourself in the Marketing Industry

A general marketing education is sufficient for most entry level positions. If you have an MBA in marketing from a major university, you can expect there will be plenty of opportunities open for you in the field. But at a certain point, you’ll need to determine which direction you want to go, and having a niche in mind or at least some specific experience you can point to will change everything.

Spend time, whether you are in school or in a different position, thinking about the ways you can stand out in the niche you want to work in. If you want to work in sports marketing, for example, spend time evaluating the campaigns being run by professional sporting teams and promoters.

Read their tweets, evaluate the data on their sites, talk to sports professionals on forums and social media. Learn how to speak the language of that niche and become immersed in it enough that when the time comes to show what you have learned, you have an easy answer.

The marketing industry is not fractured so much as it is segmented. You can find your way between segments relatively easily if the results and expertise are there to speak for you, but if there is something very specific you would like to do with your skills, the economy makes it possible to seek that ONE career and have a decent chance of landing it.

You just need to establish your personal brand and take the extra steps to stand out as an individual uniquely suited to that position. This alone will set you apart from the crowd.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozens countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony founded two companies in content development and marketing and currently provides private consulting services for the online-side of small and medium sized business’s marketing campaigns.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Distinct or Extinct in a Digital Age of Marketing

October 30, 2013 By

Marketing will never die – it is how we promote, brand, and sell products and services to each other. Whether it’s a mom and pop store putting coupons in mailboxes or a multi-billion dollar software company sponsoring a new football stadium, there will be plenty of jobs for men and women who have the creative knack and drive to dream up these campaigns.

This fact makes the current state of marketing that much more interesting. Rapidly (and picking up speed every year), advertising firms, major companies, and small businesses alike are moving their marketing budgets into digital campaigns. Nearly half of all advertising budgets in 2012 and 2013 were devoted to digital ads. It’s no accident. The tools, reach, scope, and frequency of those campaigns is just plain better.

But what does it mean for someone pursuing a career in marketing? Whether you’re a few years down the line in your career path or are looking at a degree in business and marketing and have yet to embark, there are a lot of things to consider – from who you might want to work for to what you should learn before you work there.

What’s Unique About Digital Marketing?

The best thing about marketing as an industry is that while technology, tools and even some methods can be completely revolutionized by digital media, the concepts generally remain the same.

So we have new things to consider like:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Blogging
  • PPC Advertising
  • Digital Media Buys

But the messages that reach buyers and convert to future customers are very similar to the ones used in newspaper ads, magazines, and TV spots for decades (and still today). People are still driven by scarcity. They still look to their neighbors for social cues on what to buy. They like an honest, yet palatable option over a shiny, over-hyped one any day. The major difference is not technique, but saturation.

Online there are so many more people vying for the same attention and the platforms are more accessible, so millions more can attempt to get that attention. You need to stand out and that means being distinct.

How to Be Distinct As You Embark on Your New Career

There are a number of ways to stand out in a crowded job market. The best way, though, especially in an increasingly digital marketing industry, is to show your ability to generate distinct ideas. Ideas like this:

Chipotle Scarecrow

Chipotle’s recent marketing campaign was online only and tied together the above video with a mobile game app, social media campaign and more, almost none of it with any branding of any kind.

The idea was unique and stood out because it hit a chord with so many people in the industry (and those who eat the food). And it was solely digital. A commercial wouldn’t have had this impact. Chipotle did something distinct.

Here’s another digital campaign that transcended the platform on which it was devised:

small_business_saturday_for_your_store

American Express proposed to support small businesses, and believe it not this is only 3 years old. Despite it’s youth as a campaign, the last Small Business Saturday had more than 100 million participants with President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg in New York City both promoting it.

Their use of a digital platform to reach a wide audience went viral in a very short relative time period and they’ve started something new that will long be associated with their brand.

So what does this mean for someone who is just starting in the industry?

It means developing a cross-section of skills. Where marketers of yesteryear could be proficient in basic psychology, copywriting, and visual mediums, today’s marketers need to have a much more diverse skillset:

  • Blogging
  • Social Media
  • Video Creation
  • App Development
  • Web Analytics
  • SEO

The more of these things you understand, the more compelling you’ll be as a candidate. Of course, these things are constantly evolving – you can’t just get a degree in digital media (at least not a current one), and few certificates exist for this type of skillset.

That means private study. Spend time learning how digital marketing tools work, maintain accounts on 5-6 social sites, create a blog and learn how to use platforms like WordPress. Create a knowledge base so that when a recruiter asks you if you can use X, Y or Z, you say yes more often than you say no.

And of course, start building a portfolio of creative, distinct ideas that are not like what other people are doing. While results matter most when pursuing any career opportunity, the creativity that went into achieving those results matters almost as much, and it involves technical knowledge as much as it does creative chops.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozens countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony founded two companies in content development and marketing and currently provides private consulting services for the online-side of small and medium sized business’s marketing campaigns.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Top 10 Podcasts About Marketing

October 23, 2013 By

There is no such thing as a comprehensive marketing education. While a top flight degree and experience in an innovative environment can put you at the top of your field, there is always more to learn.

Technology continues to evolve, industries continue to adapt, and marketing strategies are advancing rapidly to stay ahead of that ever-moving curve.

Fortunately we live in an age of freely accessible information, highlighted by the sheer quality of free podcasts on all things marketing. There are dozens of podcasts on the topic – from classic academic theory to cutting edge tactics and strategies from the front lines.

We’ve narrowed that list down to just 10 podcasts anyone interested in a career in marketing should be listening to.

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast

The Harvard Business Review is one of the best known publications in the business education community.

Their IdeaCast podcast is loaded with interviews, emerging trends in digital and traditional marketing, and discussions on the most effective tools and tactics currently being used. It’s a must download for anyone in or soon to be in the marketing field.

Wall Street Journal on Small Business

Wall Street Journal on Small Business

Along the same lines is the Wall Street Journal on Small Business podcast. While the WSJ podcast is focused more towards small business trends and topics in general, there are a lot of useful insights here about market conditions, consumer behavior, and more.

Again, there are quite a few interviews with industry thought leaders, as well as recent news on small business topics.

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

John Jantsch’s philosophy is one that can be applied by any sized business in almost any industry. His grass-roots style marketing strategies can give you insight into how effective marketing campaigns are being scaled at all stages of business growth.

It’s a way to hear case studies from outside of a textbook and imagine how to implement those strategies yourself.

AdAge Outlook

ad-age-outlook

Ad Age Outlook is focused heavily on news in the marketing industry. It increasingly skews towards digital marketing, but Ad Age has long been a solid source of information for traditional marketing channels as well.

Social Triggers Insider

Social Triggers Insider Podcast

Derek Halpern is known for mining gold from social psychology to show how people think, why they react the way they do, and how those insights can be used in your marketing campaigns.

Whether you are studying marketing or hoping to move forward in your career, Halpern’s insights are unique and incredibly powerful for numerous industries.

Social Media Marketing Podcast

Social Media Marketing Podcast

Social Media Examiner produces this podcast almost exclusively about social media. What was once a niche concern is now the focal point of most digital marketing campaigns.

With the Social Media Marketing Podcast, you’ll get insights into how social strategies are evolving, how new product and platform updates will affect you, and what strategies – both in content marketing and advertising – are gaining steam. This is the kind of information anyone seeking a career in marketing should know.

Beancast

The BeanCast

Now owned by Evol8tion, the company behind StartupsforBrands.com, Beancast has been around for a long time, discussing important topics in marketing, from advertising platforms to Google’s SEO updates, to the future of traditional media buys, and paid promotions both in social and offline.

This podcast will not only give you ideas; it will provide real world insights into how what you’ve learned in school or in your career can be applied across multiple verticals.

David Allen Company Podcast

DavidAllen GTD Podcasts

David Allen is the visionary behind the Getting Things Done series of books on productivity. He currently does speaking engagements on that very topic and runs this podcast.

While not precisely about marketing, the concepts here are ideal for anyone seeking a fast paced marketing career. From organizing and prioritizing tasks to analyzing results, Allan’s GTD podcast covers it all.

Game Theory

GameTheory Open Yale Course

Game Theory is one of the fundamental concepts of modern economics and it lays the foundation for much of what we know about how marketing affects its audience.

While you won’t find a lot of direct tactics or strategies in Ben Polak’s course, you will find a lot of very useful insights into how people think and why they act the way they do. Combined with fun examples, an exuberant instructor, and grad-school level discussions, this is a must for any future marketing professionals.

Marketing Over Coffee

Marketing Over Coffee Podcast

Recently relaunched, Marketing Over Coffee features John Wall and Christopher Penn discussing recent news in the new media marketing field along with specific examples of how tactics are being utilized, mostly online but not exclusively. It’s a fun one but also loaded with useful insights and actionable tips.

These are only 10 of the many podcasts that cover marketing topics every week. Let us know what your favorites are, whether it’s one already on our list or one we missed.

There are so many ways to learn and marketers eager to share their successes and ideas – listen carefully and you can walk away with powerful insights that will prepare you for a career in the marketing industry.

About the Author

Featured on websites in more than a dozens countries, Anthony Chatfield has consulted with business leaders, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs for much of the last decade.

Anthony founded two companies in content development and marketing and currently provides private consulting services for the online-side of small and medium sized business’s marketing campaigns.

Anthony currently lives in Staten Island, NY and produces marketing and content development training on numerous websites.

For more information, visit his Google+ Page.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,