Repeating the Past

Analytical Culture, DataBase Marketing, Web Analytics

I’ve been trying to get a few things straight in my head about the way people Learn Online Marketing.

Will you help me?

Here’s a Premise:

The Online Marketing world seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over; it’s almost like every new generation of technology is a clean slate and somehow people expect an approach that was flawed in a previous generation won’t be flawed this time.

Sure, technology changes, but the fundamentals of human behavior are much more difficult to change.  So you would expect there to be some constants, right?

For example, putting a high value on “quantity” of activity (remember Hits?) when every past generation has found that “quality” ends up as a more important metric.

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Consensus Learning Model

Analytical Culture, DataBase Marketing, Marketing / Tech Interface, Web Analytics

My question about whether you learned anything at SES or not didn’t get much reaction.  I suspect the answers were polarized, with half the people thinking “not really, I go there for other reasons” and the other half thinking “of course I did”.

Answers to that question might have been helpful, but…

What I’m really questioning is this: How do people in the web space learn what they learn?  Associated questions are:

1.  Has quantity eclipsed quality as a yardstick for the success?

2.  Implications for Teachers / Course Developers of the answer to #1

There are also some serious implications for “Web Marketing” adoption (in all forms) by the broader Marketing community buried in the above.  To me, this is not unlike the “CRM Problem”, where for years (and still) people confused the Technology solution with the Marketing potential, which set CRM back a decade.

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You Learn Anything at SES?

Analytical Culture, Marketing / Tech Interface, Web Analytics

SES = Search Engine Strategies San Jose, for those not in the know.

And I mean the question literally.  Not did you have a good time, see lots of friends, do a lot of beneficial networking, talk to customers, build your reputation, create content for your blog, etc.

Did you Learn anything?

Looking at the stream of blog posts, video, Tweets and so forth – much of it incredibly repetitive by the way, which is a whole other issue for this type of Journalism – I have to wonder if anybody except those new to Search actually learned anything.  You know, walked away with new knowledge they could use to improve their efforts.

I have more than a passing curiosity about this issue from a macro perspective.  As you might know, I am a Co-Chair on the Web Analytics Association’s Education Committee, responsible for creating the WAA’s Core Curriculum and upcoming Certification Testing.  So I think a lot about Learning and Education, especially as it relates to the web.  And that thinking includes different “delivery models” like Conferences.

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