Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

When to Go Outbound, aka ‘The Inbound Trap’

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When I ran marketing for the high-growth SaaS business Incapsula, I relied heavily on inbound marketing techniques to fuel our demand generation engine. Things went swimmingly in the beginning, but then I noticed the velocity of marketing-generated leads began to slow and dip below the growth expectations for the business. What happened? I had fallen into what I call “the inbound trap.” Let me explain. Inbound marketing uses techniques that bring buyers to you. At its core is creating content … [Read more...]

Two Formulas to Measure Content Marketing

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For all of the words written about the power of content marketing, too few discuss how it should be measured. Last year I wrote a two-part piece about what I called the  economics of content marketing, in which I shared two formulas to measure its impact. The two formulas measure content consumption and profitability. Consumption Compelling people to consume – read, watch, listen to – your content is the name of the game. Here is a really simple for measuring consumption: Consumption = … [Read more...]

Hiring for Inbound, Pretargeting, Next-Step Marketing: My Most Popular Posts of 2017

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Another year of blogging in the books. I've covered quite a lot over these last twelve months, from hiring to demand generation to new advertising techniques. Here are the most popular. How to Hire Great Inbound Marketers: Six Key Personality Traits Inbound marketing requires certain skills – skills you may not have in your department. As it becomes an ever-larger part of the marketing mix, finding people who are good at inbound is going to become more important. But as buzzy as inbound … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: First, Second and Third Party Data

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Marketers have more data about potential customers than ever before. Some is in their own database and some is in big advertising platforms like Google AdWords. Most marketers use a combination, and hence the need to distinguish the various sources. First party data is the information collected by you about your prospects and customers. It is typically collected from your website or marketing automation system using cookies. It may also be supplemented by research done by your SDR team or via … [Read more...]

Five Things I Wish I’d Include in The Professional Marketer

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Surely just one minute after I hit the publish button and graduate this manuscript to a book, some new technology will emerge that promises to change the future of marketing. That's what I wrote in the afterword to The Professional Marketer. And while it may not have been one minute, it’s amazing what’s happened in marketing since 2014. Over half a billion people have Instagram accounts. Starting in 2016, more people accessed the web via smartphones than desktop or laptop computers. Just to … [Read more...]