My new column is live at TechCrunch:
The biggest problem in marketing in the tech world today is that too many marketers do not know the first thing about marketing.
Digital marketers — who, as marketers, really should be cynical enough to know better — have fallen into an echo chamber of meaningless buzzwords.
First, the phrase “inbound marketing” was invented and popularized in the mid-2000s by HubSpot, a company that sells — of course — “inbound marketing software” and is receiving some bad publicity in the form of a book by former employee Dan Lyons that was released on April 5.
As Lyons alleges and seems to imply, the company’s initial success seems to have been based on the promotion of the created term rather than its actual product:
HubSpot’s first hires included a head of sales and a head of marketing. Halligan and Dharmesh filled these positions even though they had no product to sell and didn’t even know what product they were going to make. HubSpot started out as a sales operation in search of a product.
Second, the phrase “content marketing” was largely established around the same time by Joe Pulizzi. He created the Content Marketing Institute, which sells — of course — “content marketing training,” as well as tickets to the Content Marketing World conference. And what is “content marketing?” Wikipedia’s definition (as of this moment of writing) is a textbook example of saying something without actually saying anything:
Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.
The use of these and other buzzwords has caused a new generation of marketers to enter the field without knowing even the basic terms and practices that underpin our industry.