The Marketing Technologist is an initiative of the tech geeks at Greenhouse Group. We talk about analytics, code, data science and everything related to marketing technology. We are proud to be part of GroupM.

In March 2015 we started this blog as Blue Mango Geek. Our belief? When you’re writing a coworker an email longer than one paragraph, you should consider blogging about it. Share it with the rest of the company and the whole world! We decided to write about the things we discover or learned throughout the day working for a digital media agency – stories, both big and small.

After a few months, we decided that we no longer want to be a platform just for the people in our company, but for everyone who is interested in all things marketing technology. So we changed our name to The Marketing Technologist and let people from outside our company write on our platform.

A definition of this current important role and why businesses need one

Marketing and technology have become so intertwined that in many cases they seem one. But practically we’re still facing a lot of dualism regarding marketing and technology especially when looking at education programs, job descriptions and business politics.
The emergence of the term ‘marketing technologist’ can give us insights in how we can effectively make use of and develop the hybridity of marketing and technology.

What defines a Marketing Technologist?

As the title of this blog suggests we can now contemplate marketing and technology related stuff from a new perspective, the perspective of a marketing technologist.
But what is a marketing technologist? What it’s actually not is the simple merge of characteristics of different disciplines.

There’s a bridge and a higher point of view needed: The marketing technologist not only understands the insights and methods of different fields of expertise, but can shape them in new ways that add business value. The marketing technologist therefore builds on technological, marketing, analytical and strategical qualities.
This leads to analysing and seeing new business opportunities and building technological solutions for marketing purposes.

Why do we need them?

The most distinctive characteristic of the current marketing technologist is bridging paradoxical worlds (for example IT and marketing). It’s in building the bridge where value is added.

To concretize this, here are a few examples of shifting needs and questions that arise regarding online marketing and where a marketing technologist can add value:

Former question	Current question	Marketing Technologist needs
How can we write good content?	Which content do we provide where, when and why?	Well written content Analyses of the performance of content Technical possibilities to provide different content on different moments and user dependent
Can we measure the amount of users on the landingpage? What is the conversion rate? How many leads does our website generate?	Which data do we need to answer our business questions?	Formulating measurable and effective business questions Not just knowing how to measure, but knowing how to measure the right things and collect the data you need Interpret data and presenting conclusions in a way that it’s clear enough to validate business decisions

Looking for new opportunities in the way we analyse data and how data can answer business questions is something a marketing technologist focuses on and develops.

An example of an innovative way of analysing content performance is described in my colleague’s blog on how article size helps you understand your content performance.

As you can see, the questions that arise regarding businesses and the field of online marketing possibilities demand knowledge gained on different levels to be answered effectively.

The challenge

Seeing ‘online marketing technology’ as a collection of almost everything is problematic. Strength lies in bridging marketing and technology in a valuable way and that doesn’t mean linking every (business) aspect to it.

Marketing technologists will for example face legal issues, design questions and specialists are still needed there.
Knowing where to build the bridge is probably the biggest challenge.

How to become a Marketing Technologist

Unfortunately there’s no clear answer to this question. Regarding the field of education you often still have to make a choice between different disciplines. There are very few educational programs focused on online marketing, data analyses, webanalytics and ecommerce.

Overcome the dualism by broadening your interest in fields as webanalytics, optimization, online strategy, data analyses. In knowing where you can add value and being interested in stuff surrounding that field is one step forward.
It’s still a rather autodidactic field where knowledge is gained through testing, reading blogs and working within intelligent teams that have focus on online innovation, and with(in) companies that are dependent of online marketing and ecommerce.

Write for us

Would you like to become a The Marketing Technologist author? Or perhaps you just want to contribute a marktech related article that you’ve written or plan to write? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Please note that every contribution is on a volunteer basis, for which there is no monetary compensation.