At every conference we hear statements that stay with us for a long time; some statistics, some insightful, some inspiring, and some just downright funny (especially when taken out of context). I thought I’d share some of these heard at MarTech and MarketingProfs B2B Forum (MPB2B) last week:
“In many use cases talking to humans is overrated. Chatbots are the future.” – Dharmesh Shah
“Advocacy puts storytelling in the hands of employees, who can tell it with more trustworthiness than the brand.” – Stephan Hovnanian
“You shouldn’t have to read a company’s values, you should be able to experience them.” – Ron Tite
“Backing up is not the same as backing down.” – Alison Levine
“Only 6% of CMOs feel their measurements help determine the next best marketing action.” – James Thomas
“Augmented Reality will not just change the way we sell, but the way we design will change.” – Robert Scoble
“Comedy comes from pain, as long as everyone’s okay.” – Tim Washer
“People come first, the tools just help enable the people.” – Jon Miller
“You need to understand the customer view. It’s their journeys that make the platforms real.” – Tony Byrne
“What people do on the destination side of the click is more important than the click itself.” – Elle Woulfe
“AI is the Iron Man or Iron Woman armour that Marketing can wrap themselves in.” – Steve Lucas
“Buyers don’t do business with companies they’ve never heard of, and brands they do not trust.” – Katie Martell
“Even though you want to talk about the tech, you must go to market with what people care about.” David Baeumler
“If you don’t use MarTech you will get left behind.” – Travis Wright
“I think next year we should have Christopher Penn explain machine learning through interpretive dance.” – Mitch Joel
“Sometimes you don’t want to be the early adopter.” – Brian Kardon
“If you start and end with ROI you miss the opportunity in the middle to drive value.” – Samantha Stone
“We cannot run our business with our eyes closed.” – George Thomas
“There will be two kinds of jobs in the future: either you will manage machines or machines will manage you.” – Christopher Penn
“It is amazing what you can do when you have faith, faith in who you are, your product, and your purpose.” – Derreck Kayongo
There are a lot of lessons about marketing in these statements. Find your brand voice, know your audience, be human and let your customers see you for who you are, you can learn a lot out of failure and pain, and don’t be afraid of technology. The future is bright with you in it.
