Core Tech Concepts that Marketers Need to Know

If you’re a digital marketer, you’re well aware that your trade is rapidly evolving. Technology is moving at a million miles per hour, and if you’re not quick on your feet, innovation will rapidly outpace you.

Marketers are artists and analysts. Whether you’re a writer, graphic designer, media buyer, sales copywriter, or communications strategist, you’re a creative forerunner.  At the end of the day, however, you’re just one person. You need technology to help you scale and amplify your efforts.

Never touched a line of code? No worries. You don’t need to jump out of your element to learn how to program — through effective communication with amazing engineers, you can accomplish more than you ever thought imaginable. And if you want to become an expert programmer? More power to you.

Step outside of your comfort zone, and you’ll see amazing room for growth. To that end, here are three tech trends that will rock your world:

1. Dynamic Personalization

“These technologies use the best of behavioral tracking, collaborative filtering, audience targeting, and dynamic personalization.”

If only your brand could generate a custom-targeted content strategy for all your users in the many different stages of the conversion funnel. Between segmenting your distribution lists, rapidly generating high quality content, and advertising to new customers, you’re probably already swamped — how in the world can you target users individually?

Technology can help.

“The key technologies and trends in personalization — that is, the disruption vectors that smart companies will drive and ride to success — over the next 12 to 24 months are led by a collection of technologies we call post-programming curation,” according to a recent GigaOm report. “These technologies use the best of behavioral tracking, collaborative filtering, audience targeting, and dynamic personalization.”

In other words, tools like Gravity, Demandbase, Trucentric, BloomReach, Rovi, and Outbrain do the leg-work and heavy thinking for you. You focus on creating, and they’ll streamline the matchmaking.

2. RSS Feeds

Leverage RSS to automatically syndicate what you’re already writing.

As a content aficionado, you probably read a heck of a lot of blogs — and you’ve probably spent years digesting content through popular RSS readers.

What you may not realize is that RSS technology extends beyond content consumption — it’s a fundamental platform for strategic partnerships and content distribution. Think about it: you can put extensive manual effort into writing guest posts for your strategic partners, or you can leverage RSS to automatically syndicate what you’re already writing. No need to write additional content, manually copy and paste articles, or re-format content for partner sites.

Let the machines automate the process and take care of the grunt-work for you.

3. Big Data

“Data almost never hands you the answers or insights directly; it just illuminates the issue.”

Marketers and business leaders are well-acquainted with this concept. What you may not realize, however, is that it’s a total buzzword.

‘Big data’ is more than just an intimidatingly large sample size or file. It’s a perspective that re-positions how business leaders, nonprofit founders, and government institution can leverage numbers to make more informed and creative strategic decisions.

The problem is that organizations are collecting information that they’re not effectively using.

“Data almost never hands you the answers or insights directly; it just illuminates the issue,” wrote Wetpaint CEO Ben Elowitz in an article for AllThingsD. “And it illuminates a whole bunch of them at once, so it’s up to you to figure out what the priorities are.”

To that end, a big myth about ‘big data’ is that it’s a technical concept. In reality, quantitative analysis is equal parts strategy, creativity, and engineering. For truly valuable insight, you need all three.

Image courtesy of SFC/shutterstock