The Truth about “Secret Sauce” and Other Marketing Wonders

As I’ve mentioned, I’m unemployed, and I’m looking for a job. The field I work in, broadly, is called “marketing”, and “marketing”, like many other disciplines, is becoming enhanced by technology. I’ve had some extra time to explore what’s “in” and what’s working in the field of marketing, and I’d like to share some of that with you.

“Search Engine Optimization” (SEO), which, not long ago, was a major thing, is on its way out because Google keeps changing its algorithms. “Social media” is huge, and just plain, simple old “blogging” is becoming a major activity among many companies. What’s really hot these days are things like “inbound marketing”, “content marketing”, and the technology enhancement is called “marketing automation”.

At my last job, I worked with a “marketing automation” program called Eloqua. If you follow the business world in any way, you may have heard of Eloqua – they had a successful IPO ($12.00 per share) around the time of the Facebook IPO implosion. Then late last year, Oracle acquired them for roughly $24.00 per share (about $870 million). That’s about 10x revenue, in a world where 3x or 4x is typical. All that is to say, “Eloqua works”.

If you’re involved with marketing in any way, (or if you want to really enhance your marketing effort for your organization), I’d urge you to look this up or better yet, give me a call!

In any event, I stumbled upon the following video by a marketer named Marcus Sheridan through a link at LinkedIn (in an article comparing three of the leading solutions).

The Honest Economy: Marcus Sheridan at TEDxRockCreekPark:



In this video, he describes where “secret sauce” comes from, and why such things ought not to be secret any more. To read more, see: http://www.thesaleslion.com/today-friends-sincerely/

I have no idea what the event is where he’s speaking. But trends like the one he is describing hint at “common grace” to me, and lead me to believe that we are going to see better times on many fronts. Imagine something like an “honest media” describing abortion as what it really is, instead of according to the spin. Imagine if marketers like this begin to understand that honesty is good, not only because it’s good for business, but because God created such a concept as “truth”.

(I’m not naïve enough to believe that the whole big bad world is going to begin to operate according to honest principles. But it is not hard to see God’s hand behind this urge to honesty.)


By the way, I’ve taken the dive into “social media”:

Follow me on Twitter @johnbugay
See my (updated!) personal website: http://johnbugay.com/
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johnbugay/

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