Best-Of-The-Best Marketing Ebooks of 2015
Marketing is changing rapidly. Some say it has changed more in the last 5 years than it did in the last 500 years.
Responsibilities of CMO’s are also increasing due to the shift in buyer behavior and the fast changing world of marketing technology.
We may very well be entering a golden age of marketing, but this is not coming without some cost.
That cost is visible as a whole new learning curve for marketers, who are starting to have to be more and more technical. And on the other side you have technical people, who are having to learn more marketing.
Modern marketing leaders, or aspiring modern marketers must learn to master the discipline of lifelong-learning by continuously reading, studying and experimenting in an ever expanding field of marketing expertise.
Today, like I did in 2014, I want to provide you with a selection of the best marketing ebooks that have been created in 2015. These marketing ebooks are part of my way of lifelong learning, and I want to share some of the best that I found in 2015 with you.
(if you are not interested in the little personal story that follow, just scroll down to find the list of best marketing ebooks of 2015 !) Read more
The Rise of Online Advertising, and why I don’t get it

On the one hand online advertising is growing, and on the other hand stats show they are not effective. Can someone explain?
For a couple of years I have been blogging to help others. Now has the moment come where I need your help!
My question is very simple:
Why do marketers keep advertising online, while clearly it doesn’t seem to be working?
And before your click away, no, this is not yet another blog post “yelling” to stop advertising, and to start doing content marketing.
This is something else, and I am merely trying to get my head around something.
And for this I need your help… Read more
The Future of Advertising is Google’s “Don’t be Evil”

Google’s über cookie
Marketers are trying to collect a lot of data, in a move towards big data. But Google and users are fighting against it : keyword not provided, cookie not accepted, location turned off, notification turned off.
On the other hand, we are leaving more data trails than we have ever done before. Even garbage cans are scanning our mobile phones to get the MAC address from your phone to understand how many times you came by (they’ve stopped that now due to protest).
Next thing is you’ll get an iBeacon alert trying to sell you something because they know you’ll pass by on monday at 8u30.
Think about this for a second how addicted we are to our mobile devices and how addicted we are to using cool technology like Google. In many ways you could say Google knows us better than our wives or our husbands because all the stuff we put in there lasts seven years.
Google’s über cookie is coming
Google is in a way walking a very thin line. On the one hand they claim to protect our privacy (keyword not provided), but on the other hand Google is reinventing the bowser cookie into an über cookie: AdID.
The stuff you browse on your laptop and the stuff you browse on your smartphone could all be lumped into one big profile on you. Advertisers will be able to tap into this information, because that’s where the money comes from for Google. Some even speculate that Google will connect your online behavior with your real profile.
Should you invest in Native Advertising as Marketer ?
I’m looking at it and I just don’t quite get it. Banner ads don’t work, and yet marketers still keep investing in it. According to a recent article in Smart Insight click-through rates remain impressively low with “banner blindness” as a key reason for ignoring ads.
One day, someone needs to explain me why a marketer doesn’t get fired by the CEO for spending thousands of ad euros and reporting a conversion of 0.2%. But let’s keep that discussion for another time.
Native advertising. They are the latest addition to digital advertising land. Named as the “disruptive” technology that will change the advertising business model. It is considered the fresh air that the beleaguered publishers need.
They seem to be more efficient, according to recent research from IPG Media and Sharethrough:
- Consumers looked at native ads 52% more frequently than banner ads.
- Native advertisements registered 9% higher lift for brand affinity and 18% higher lift for purchase intent responses.
- Consumers looked at native ads more than the original editorial content.
Some feel as native advertising is the same as advertorials or article marketing.
It’s not.
OK. So what is native advertising? And do you need to use it your marketing mix? Read more
5 Real Reasons Why CEOs Cut Your Marketing Budget
Digital disruptions are causing marketers to rethink their position within the company. The increasing expectations from customers, social media, mobile and globalization are giving organizations great opportunities, to those who are willing to change.
Many struggle with this change. Few have been able to position themselves to capture the real business benefits.
I think this change starts with strong leadership and a change of mindset. If you do not have that leadership and mindset, your CEO will keep cutting your budget. Here are 5 Misconceptions about Marketing, understood by those that will make the change, neglected by those of the past.
Budget cuts are yours by those who neglect. Read more