Five years ago, at the forefront of the marketing technology explosion, Scott Brinker paved the way as an industry expert by creating the MarTech Supergraphic. Since its inception in 2011, the supergraphic has evolved to illustrate the exponential growth of marketing technology as a category:
The 2016 supergraphic contains 87% more logos than last year alone
So when Scott Brinker published his 2016 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic last month, the super-growth for the category became more apparent than ever before. The supergraphic alone has been shared over 3,500 times on LinkedIn and represents roughly 3,500 logos, approximately 87% more than last year alone. Although the infographic has become a credible reference point for the industry, it has also become increasingly difficult to navigate despite much effort put towards categorization. Here at Traackr, extracting signal from the noise is what we do, so we figured we’d take a crack at it…
We identified the 500 Most Influential Marketing Leaders to help us extract signal from the noise
The supergraphic is broken up into 6 clusters, including Advertising & Promotion, Content & Experience, Social & Relationships, Commerce & Sales, Data, and Management. Using Traackr, we identified the Most Influential 500 Marketing Leaders (look for an upcoming post on this) to see what they actually care about. Here some key insights we discovered:
Content and social marketing increasingly dominate all others
Since 2014, content and social marketing have represented at least half of the mindshare among these marketing leaders, diminishing every other category.
Social marketing is on the rise, increasingly gaining traction year-over-year
Since 2014, mentions of social marketing among marketing leaders have represented 40% of the total mentions to date.
Display ads represent only 10% of the total mentions between 2014 - 2016
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll also notice the category of “display ads” has decreased in popularity in the same amount of time. It’s no wonder traditional marketing is on the decline.
Our observation? Marketing leaders are in complete alignment
Based on this data, marketing leaders appear to be headed towards the same destination: social marketing + content marketing represents brands evolving in a strategic direction towards customer centricity. People have become influential content producers, leading the conversations in their communities. Brands, under the influence of these communities, are becoming more human and connected, and branding themselves as such (hence the explosion of sustainability marketing for example).
The challenge? There’s limited awareness of the path to success
The challenge for companies is to transform themselves towards customer centricity. Brands must raise their marketing game by hiring top talent, developing the right skill sets, and elevating the discussion on how to transform their marketing departments. Technologies for social and content marketing, such as Traackr, will enable brands to scale elements of their programs or even be catalyst for change--but will not replace the necessity to for brands to start on the path of transformation. The lack of discussions among marketing leaders on the topic of talent management and retooling teams should raise eyebrows as it shows that only a few have identified the transformational need and will embark on this journey before most will.
We enjoyed playing around with the data in Traackr to make sense of Brinker’s awesome infographic. Expect more insights in the weeks to come.
So, based on these insights, what marketing activities will you prioritize? And are they among the trending topics among marketing leaders? What do you think about the data presented from our analysis in Traackr? We’d love to hear your opinion, start a conversation in the comments below.