| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 06/24/2013 - 06/26/2013 | San Francisco CA | |
| 06/26/2013 | ||
| 07/15/2013 - 07/17/2013 | Dana Point Ca | |
| 07/23/2013 | Los Angeles CA | |
| 07/25/2013 | Los Angeles CA | |
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Content Marketing World Tech Summit
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09/12/2013 | Cleveland OH |
| 09/18/2013 - 09/20/2013 | Austin TX | |
| 09/18/2013 - 09/20/2013 | Austin TX | |
| 09/23/2013 | New York City NY | |
| 10/01/2013 - 10/02/2013 | New York City NY |
IDG Global Solutions
IBM’s Christine Jacobs says content is the foundation for conversation. Jacobs believes successful marketers need to understand their audience, avoidpush marketing, and focus on creating a dialogue. At a BtoB Digital conference in March 2013, IDG Global Solutions Director Howard Sholkin asked Jacobs to share her advice on how to achieve the promise of conversational marketing…
IDG Global Solutions
IBM’s Christine Jacobs said she is laser-focused on paid, owned, and earned media as a marketing director for North America. She gained many insights five years ago when IBM conducted a review of digital marketing. At a BtoB Digital conference in March 2013, IDG Global Solutions Director Howard Sholkin asked Jacobs to explain what she and her colleagues discovered…
IDG Connect
Over the next two weeks, IDG Connect is serializing commentary from industry experts on marketing 2013 predictions. We feature expert opinion on the key trends in 2013, and regional outlooks on what 2013 holds for marketing around the world.
Modern marketers are officially living in the “Big Data era”. According to IBM, 90% of the world’s data has been produced in the last two years. While possessing loads of information on customers and prospects is a good thing, it’s also incredibly overwhelming. Marketing’s role is changing and has evolved as a result of the Big Data world where we now live. Once known as the department that came up with punchy taglines, marketing skills have shifted from art to science. Today’s marketers are extremely analytical and have a clear understanding of how to boost the bottom line through data.
In 2013, I predict we’ll see an increased focus on Big Data for marketing. I believe marketers will continue to leverage technology and more importantly increase their use of technology to further understand their buyers. If marketers can take advantage of this data and make it work for them, companies will benefit from valuable insights necessary to drive revenue.
As marketers tackle the Big Data challenge it’s helpful to consider the following:
Computerworld
Computerworld - Dell’s buyout deal should give the company renewed business flexibility and stealth, but its customers need to know if Dell will be in the PC market for the long haul.
“Now, Dell will be able to better compete with HP, Lenovo, IBM and Cisco,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. “They can do what they want without the scrutiny of Wall Street and the SEC, and do it under the radar, making it harder for competitors to guess at Dell’s next moves and then making defensive moves to thwart them.”
However, whether Dell, the third-largest PC maker in the world, plans to continue to be a major player in the PC business is an open question. That question has customers – both enterprises and consumers – concerned.
“It’s too early to tell how much Dell wants to remain in PCs,” said Moorhead. “They could more easily reduce or exit the business as a private company… Dell customers, specifically business PC customers and channels, could be a little edgy until Dell announces it’s in the PC business for the long haul.”
Hewlett-Packard, which has been barely hanging on to its number one position in the PC market, used the news of Dell’s buyout announcement to take a jab at its competitor.
“Dell has a very tough road ahead,” HP said in a released statement. “The company faces an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers. And with a significant debt load, Dell’s ability to invest in new products and services will be extremely limited. Leveraged buyouts tend to leave existing customers and innovation at the curb.”
PC World (US)
SAN FRANCISCO – The PC is undergoing its most radical makeover since the advent of the IBM PC three decades ago. Ultrabooks and Windows 8 are leading the charge. Slim Ultrabook designs succeed where netbooks failed, delivering performance, battery life, and a full-featured computing experience. Ultrabooks, once seen as mere copies of Apple’s MacBook Air, are now extending its concept. Experiments such as Toshiba’s Satellite U845W, with its cinematic widescreen aspect ratio, are expanding the definition of what a PC is.
Revolutions are chaotic. They upset the status quo and leave old ways of doing things behind. The PC, once the spearhead of the personal digital revolution, may seem antiquated alongside sexy new tablets and smartphones de¬-signed for an always-connected world. In reality, the PC is an intimate participant in the current revolution, changing its own nature to respond to new usage models and a new generation of users. Microsoft’s recent announcement of the Surface—a Windows 8 PC posing as a tablet—shows the PC’s flexibility and relevance in the modern digital era.
By John Kennedy
Vice President, Corporate Marketing, IBM
What’s the biggest obstacle marketers face today when it comes to connecting with customers?
It’s building a productive partnership with their CIO, according to 60% of the marketers IBM recently talked with for a survey. The survey underscores what’s becoming clear to those in the marketing and technology departments. To stay relevant in our uber-digital, hyper-empowered consumer age, CMOs and CIOs need to become every bit as connected.
From tweets to pinboards, Tumblr updates and Facebook likes, every digital move a person makes leaves digital clues to understanding brand-love or early warning signs of customer defection and churn.
eMarketer
The mobile and social marketing spheres are moving fast, and marketers are doing their best to keep up. That’s one of the findings of IBM’s May 2012 survey of marketing professionals worldwide, “The State of Marketing 2012.” The continued fracturing of the media landscape has made it increasingly difficult for marketers to reach customers in large numbers. The poll found that the largest percentage of respondents, 41%, named the growth of marketing channels and devices as the top challenge to their company over the next few years. This was followed by customer collaboration and influence, named by one-third of respondents.
MarketingCharts
Almost 9 in 10 global marketers either have a mobile site or a mobile application or plan to employ one in the future, according to an IBM study released in June 2012. Yet, only 1 in 5 currently run mobile marketing tactics as part of integrated campaigns, with the remainder running their mobile programs discretely and on an ad hoc basis.
The most popular mobile tactics currently employed are mobile sites (46%) and apps (45%), with mobile versions of email (35%), mobile messaging campaigns (32%), location-based targeting (27%) and mobile ads (25%) yet to move into the mainstream. Even so, when factoring in future plans, at least two-thirds of the respondents will be using each of the tactics at some point in the future.
BtoB
The rise of Big Data has complicated direct and digital marketing as never before. While new technologies have increased marketers’ understanding of their customer and prospect databases, the amount of data flowing into those databases is overwhelming the technology—as well as marketers’ state of mind. IBM Corp.’s “Global Chief Marketing Officer Study,” released last fall, illustrates the state of concern. Based on interviews with 1,734 CMOs from 64 countries in 2011, the study identified Big Data as the chief challenge to marketing, cited by 71% of respondents.
Also, 79% believe that over the next five years, the complexity of the data will be high or very high, but almost as many feel unprepared to handle it. The difficulty in coping with Big Data is felt even among those companies IBM characterized as “outperforming organizations.” Among those organizations, 65% reported being unprepared to cope with the explosion of data, compared with 77% of IBM’s “underperforming organizations.”
IDG Strategic Marketing Services
IBM’s October Information on Demand conference became a worldwide event through the use of social media. Most of the conference content was developed through social interaction and social stimulated ongoing comments during and after the fall 2011 conference. In winning BtoB’s Integrated program award, BtoB cited the event’s hashtag achieved a Twitter reach of 14.3 million uniques and more than 63,000 new “likes” were recorded on relevant Facebook pages. IDG Strategic Marketing Services Director Howard Sholkin spoke with IBM’s Dave Laverty in his offices in Marlboro, Massachusetts.
