Mayur Gupta, marketing, and the battle of the behemoths – VB Engage

Episode number five is alive, folks. Are you excited? You should be.

This week we bring you Mayur Gupta, who is widely known as the first official “marketing technologist” to be hired by a Fortune 500 company. He’s knowledgeable, sports a great beard, and has a brain full of martech wisdom.

And if you missed the last episode, make sure to catch Sarah Austin’s thoughts on chatbots, A.I., and the future of how we talk to brands.

Before we get to Mayur, Stewart and Travis discuss some interesting things going on in the tech world, including Mary Meeker’s latest report on Internet trends.

As we know, mobile messaging apps are hot right now. And yet, despite a 213-page report, Meeker didn’t dive into chatbots or artificial intelligence for more than a single slide. VentureBeat editor-in-chief Blaise Zerega noticed the omission first, so we thought it would be rude not to continue the conversation.

Last year, Meeker made a comment about mobile advertising and how many people are missing the boat around mobile marketing. She was spot on with this observation, as many agencies and teams are focused on search, digital display, and social advertising, but few are proficient at in-app mobile advertising. Travis shares some of his personal experiences around mobile advertising, and talks about why he thinks it is cheap and effective.

Speaking of bots, the NBA recently released a chatbot — one that showcases highlights from teams and individual players. No word on whether you can get highlights from your favorite players crying about fouls or flopping on the ground, though.

Also, in the martech world this week, Intercom released Smart Campaigns, which is attempting to re-imagine marketing automation platforms and how you build drip campaigns. That opens up a can of worms for Stewart, who gets into ease-of-use, on-boarding, and why many apps fail.

We then welcome Mayur Gupta, SVP and head of digital at HealthGrades, who discusses marketing technology and breaks down the huge 4,000-company martech landscape into four main buckets: media, data, content, and commerce.

Media drives traffic, which drives acquisition and, in turn, drives awareness. Data is underneath everything that we do, from CRM to consumer insights, analytics to performance. Content drives the experiences. And commerce becomes an organic output of the other three.

“Don’t be thinking about which of the 4,000 marketing technologies I should invest in, instead, think of these broad buckets,” Mayur said. “Align to the business problems that you are trying to solve. And then create some sort of framework that helps you identify a journey that is ‘crawl, walk, and run.’ This will help you figure out your key priorities.”

He shares his thoughts on martech, salestech, and adtech — and what is happening in mobile — and discusses how fragmented they are. In fact, we’ve fragmented the landscape so much that we need more convergence and more consolidation, according to Mayur. This leads to a frank discussion about massive marketing technology vendors and enterprise-class solutions, such as those from Adobe, Salesforce, and others.

This interview is a must-listen to for anyone in the marketing, sales, or advertising technology space. Mayur is a thought leader that you want to listen to. Can’t get enough of him? You can read his blog, InspireMartech.com, to find out more.

Next week, we discuss financial technologies, m-commerce, mobile payments, and mobile banking with Aunkur Arya of Braintree.

Thanks to our launch sponsor Braintree for helping to make VB Engage possible.