How did they become so successful? How did their ideas change the way marketing is done today? What contributions did they leave us and how can we make the most of them? These are some of the questions we would like to address in the following lines.
Here are some of the most important authors within this line of research:
1. Seth Godin
Seth Godin is considered one of the most important marketing theorists of the 21st century. He is the author of several bestsellers such as “The Purple Cow” and “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” in which he outlines key elements to differentiate ourselves from the competition and take advantage of the rise of the Internet.
Gordin is an American of Jewish origin who graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Philosophy and Computer Science in 1982. He subsequently earned an MBA in Marketing from Stanford Business School.
In his early years of professional career he served as brand manager at Spinnaker, where he led the first generation of multimedia products, which was an innovative contribution for its time.
In 1995, he founded Yoyodyne Entertainment, a company specializing in interactive marketing. It was known for creating online promotional programs such as games, contests and raffles for Internet users.
Thanks to this, that same year Seth Godin received the Momentum Award, which is a recognition of his notable achievements in the Internet industry and digital marketing in particular.
We believe that his contributions laid the foundations for what we know today as inbound marketing, through his work “Permission Marketing.” Here is one of his reflections in this book that we would like to share with you:
“Interrupting marketing will never be effective again. You can’t expect that finding large groups of people to send spam messages to will result in any of them sending you money.
Instead, the future belongs to marketers who create an easy channel for satisfied customers to recommend products to others. If you can get the spark going, you can just stand back and let them do the talking.”
In this way, he is not only an important exponent of digital marketing but also laid the foundations for a new way of turning marketing into a more human, empathetic and consumer-friendly practice.
2. Brian Halligan
Brian Halligan is co-founder with Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot , a software designed to make it easy to implement the core strategies found in each of the stages of the inbound marketing methodology.
When he wanted to create a company that would pioneer a new field in the digital world, he had to develop an entire theory to support it, and that is where he published Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs in 2009 (in which he thanks Seth Godin for serving as a source of inspiration for his work).
Next up in 2014 was Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online . In doing so, Halligan became a leading exponent of digital marketing worldwide , changing the way we do marketing while giving us a technological solution like Hubspot to realize his new vision.
Halligan holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Vermont and completed an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2005.
His professional career began at Parametric Technology Corporation. From 2000 to 2004 he worked at Groove Networks as Vice President of Sales, a company that was later acquired by Microsoft and renamed Microsoft SharePoint Workspace.
In 2006, he founded Hubspot, which 10 years later reported in its Year In Review that it had received $271 million in total revenue and 1,597 employees with headquarters in Cambridge (Massachusetts), Dublin, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Portsmouth. This demonstrates the great success that his company and its software have had in the digital world and for businesses.
3. Team Ash
Tim is a Russian digital marketing consultant and advisor , author of the bestseller: Landing Page Optimization (with more than 50,000 copies sold worldwide).
He is co-founder of SiteTunners, a company dedicated to offering conversion website development and landing page services with offices in San Diego and Tampa.
It is worth noting that landing pages have become important tools within inbound marketing to convert visitors into leads.
Tim has developed extensive experience in user-centered marketing and design, persuasion strategies and understanding online behavior, neuromarketing and landing page optimization.
Tim earned a double Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering and Cognitive Science from UC San Diego while studying abroad.
During his PhD studies at this same university, he also obtained his Master's degree in Computer Science with a focus on self-learning neural networks and artificial intelligence.
In 2015, this important exponent of digital marketing was mentioned by Forbes as one of the 10 best online marketing experts and by Entrepreneur magazine in 2016 as part of the top 15 “online marketing influencers to watch”.
Over the past 20 years, Tim has helped several major US and international brands qatar number for whatsapp develop successful SEO initiatives. Companies such as Google, Expedia, eHarmony, Facebook, American Express, Canon, Nestlé, Symantec, Intuit, Human, Seimens, Cisco are just a few of them.
4. Neil Patel
Continuing with the top 5 of the best online marketing experts highlighted by Forbes magazine, we cannot fail to mention the important role of Neil Patel within the digital world, as he is also recognized for being among the top 100 entrepreneurs under 30 years old, named by former President Obama.
Born in England and of Indian descent, Patel is the creator of 4 of the world's most popular SEO tools and the author of one of the leading marketing blogs. He is co-author of the bestseller Hustle: The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum with Patrick Vlaskovits and Jonas Koffler.
He is the founder of multiple digital marketing tools such as: Crazy Eggs, Hello Bar, Kissmetrics, Quick Sprout and his most recent keyword analysis and search platform Ubersuggest to improve the SEO of a website.
Using social media and influencer marketing, he became known through a campaign using the hashtag #quienesneilpatel, translated into Portuguese as #quemeneilpatel.
This caused many people to start searching on Google about him, making him a trend within this search engine.
5. Vilma Nunez
If you have been researching and searching for information about digital marketing on social media and Google for some time, you have probably come across an article, video or post by this advertising specialist and consultant.
Vilma Núñez holds a degree in Advertising (Magna Cum Laude) from APEC University in Santo Domingo, a Master's degree in Advertising and a Master's degree in Business (MBA) from EUDE Business School located in Madrid and a PhD in Advertising and Public Relations (Ph.D Cum Laude) from Camilo José Cela University.
She has been working in communications, marketing and advertising for over eight years. Since 2011 she decided to create a blog where she could share her knowledge and learnings in the digital world.
Thanks to the rise of its content, a year later it won the Bitácoras award for the best blog of the public (being the most voted blog among more than 20,000 that participated). Since 2013, he founded “Convierte Más” a company that offers marketing consulting to companies, where he has educated more than 21,000 professionals and 950 professionals with his paid consulting services.
In short, all these exponents of digital marketing , in addition to having significant training in the advertising world, stand out for their entrepreneurial spirit in materializing their ideas in successful projects and companies, where they highlight the importance that digital marketing strategies have today for selling and offering valuable content to consumers.