In this week’s episode of SearchChat, we interview Mark Schaefer, co-host of Marketing Companion Podcast, on what it means to make companies more human. What does he reveal? That the needs and expectations of our customers are seriously far off from where companies think they are.  We don’t have the needed emotional connection to customers. […]

Steve and I spent time together recently at both a Red Sox game but more importantly, at MarTech East in Boston. The shift in conversation was wildly fascinating: the focus seemed to be personalization, privacy, and security. When it comes to personalization, people are finally seeming to focus less on the shiny objects and more […]

There’s a serious need for changing the way we deal with customer data. How you can use data and still maintain a good relationship with your customers, even among the distrust? We also take a look at who has failed at that, so you can learn what not to do. Take a listen. First: There’s […]

As summer hits its hot, vacation-filled days the work world slows down for a minute. In these slower moments, there’s a chance to reflect on the speed of business.  We discuss how B2B buyers are spending more time researching their purchases —75% said they are now using more sources and taking more time. B2B marketing […]

Is martech marketing? Can you market without it? Do mature marketing organizations need to be including martech?  In a recent blog post we mentioned that 67% of B2B companies doing personalization are either entirely or mostly using manual processes for content personalization. That’s an enormous amount of people engaging in manual processes instead of automation. […]

“Come on. All this AI stuff, around marketing and sales, that’s all just hype, right? That’s not a real thing that matters. Maybe it’ll matter someday. But it doesn’t yet matter today.” That’s a question I got recently, and it got Steve Zakur and I wondering where we are on the hype curve. Is it […]

In today’s episode of SearchChat, Steve Zakur and I tackle the TopRank blog and what skills B2B content marketers need to have. How do you take those people coming in the front door, the first interaction on your site, and engage them so it’s not the last page they look at? At the end of […]

In this episode Steve Zakur and I are curious about the ways AI can be used to drive greater value for your company. We have our opinions about our own software of course, but this is a bigger question: how can you use AI to make your entire team and business smarter? What companies need […]

If a moat is an uncrossable chasm, then data may not be a moat. No amount of data can make it impossible for the competition to catch up. But it could be an inconvenience to the competition who is trying to climb your walls. The struggle is that there is very little data a company […]

Personalization: why do it? No, this isn’t a suggestion that you shouldn’t. It’s just important to think about why you are doing it in the first place. Personalization needs to benefit the customer experience and drive your business. In this podcast we start with eMarketer trends — ad agencies are building their own analytics platforms. […]

It’s time for marketers to put humanity back in their marketing practices. Today for SearchChat, Steve Zakur and I discuss first whether you should be worried about government regulation. It seems some marketers have their head in the sand that it will never be an issue, others have their “paranoid” dial turned up to 13. […]

There’s major power for automation within marketing, and not everyone is harnessing it. This episode of SearchChat Steve Zakur and I ask: how can CMOs use both automation and data to keep their seat at the table as companies evolve? Now matter how long it takes to perfect, your work it will never be done. […]

The surveys dropping lately show a staggering trend towards the hottest and most concerning topic out there: data. A recent survey by B2B Marketing and The MX Group identified the differences between top performing and poor performing B2B marketers. CMO identifies data ownership as the top most important subject to marketers. Yet another survey by […]

Alternatively: Chicken Soup for the Customer’s Soul It’s time to start thinking about the value of intent based marketing differently. The idea itself isn’t new, but now the data is finally there for people to solve their business problems. What is your customer experience like if you could walk into a diner feeling under the weather, […]

In a recent study,  63% of CEOs agreed that AI will have more impact on their business than the internet. Think about that for a minute. The internet. And yet, 23% said they had no plans to do anything about it. Why? Partially, people tend to overestimate how much data they need to get to a reliable result […]

Facebook is having a terrible week. After experiencing a barrage of trouble over the last few months, they’ve finally crossed a line Apple won’t tolerate. They made available an app that gave themselves a scary amount of access to your device. It’s opt-in, but Facebook seems aware that it’s invading privacy — and appears to […]

Is the dream of the visitor journey dying? How do we make journeys more functional without using data people don’t want us to have? Marketers are starting to learn they can’t just orchestrate a visitor journey from start to finish. It’s all about improving the journeys people actually make. They’re complex, not straightforward. Steve and […]

Analytics matter: this is the unavoidable fact of digital marketing, even for those digital marketers that fear it. But are you even measuring the right things? Do you know how to make meaningful improvements? In this episode of our SearchChat podcast, Steve and I talk about site search, personalization, and big data. In our work […]

We at SeachChat frequently talk about how AI and site search produce value for your site. But let’s break that down for a minute. What this is all about at the end of the day is customer experience. When a prospective customer arrives on your site: are you helping them? Are you answering their question? […]

Not enough marketers take advantage of the other kind of search — the one on your own website. Few companies budget for it, while budgeting for content without a second thought. But when they search, can visitors even find the content they need on your site? Steve and I are excited to introduce a new […]

If you close your eyes and imagine what a search engine results page looks like you probably see something that looks a lot like Google’s search results. You see a list of titles and text snippets that potentially describe the thing that you’re looking for. That’s what Google and Amazon and practically every other site […]

Autocomplete is the bane of any message sent from a mobile device. However, one place where autocomplete shines is on search engines. Autocomplete, also called autosuggest or incremental search, improves the user experience by making it easier to execute searches by suggesting words and phrases that a matching algorithm determines are appropriate based upon the […]