Transcript

Brett Tabke: This is Brett Tabke. We are back here again today with uh. Joining us now is Mr. John Marshall of Marketing Motive. Thanks for taking the time to be with us.

John Marshall: Great to be with you.

Brett Tabke: Most of our viewers on WebmasterWorld,SearchEngineWorld, even PubCon attendees probably know you best from your days as founder, co-founder of ClickTracks.

John Marshall: Indeed.

Brett Tabke: Which you recently this year have moved on from.

John Marshall: Yep that is correct. Yeah we started MarketMotive uh in July, and we've just started to roll out so MarketMotive is definitely very young, and yeah, I am no longer at ClickTracks.

Brett Tabke: Well, lets jump right into it. Why did you leave?

John Marshall: Um, if I give you a little bit of history, um it will become apparent, and actually in general it is kind of an interesting topic. When we started ClickTracks, which I started ClickTracks in 2002, we felt that making a really easy to use analytics tool, particularly analytics processes was the answer to the problem, and you know that I came from a background of web analytics before that so I felt like I had a pretty good background in the field as a user and I felt that the problem with existing tools was that they were complicated to use, and you know. So ClickTracks was designed to be really easy to use. It turned out what we learned through, as ClickTracks progressed and grew and so forth, we learned that there was an even more significant problem that prevented people getting good data from the tool, using the tool, or even buying the tool in the first place, which was they didn't approach the tool with an analytical mindset so a lot of the customers that we have at ClickTracks they are not trained to be analytical and it is not surprising, very few people are. So what we then did is we decided to put in place a program of education that would teach people how to approach the whole problem in an analytical way before they even think about the tool itself. This actually was very successful. We, I think we probably had more progress in sales of the product once we started to adopt that approach, and essentialy I was the spearhead of that approach. I did a lot of webinars and speaking at conferences, although that is not such a good opportunity for this, but anyways.

Brett Tabke: You were well known for your demos..

John Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to show people how to do things you know because its just so powerful, um so I did a lot of teaching, and um we then as you know of course we merged the company
with J.L. Halsey and that has a number of online marketing companies within that family. That went very well; The products are well integrated and the companies are very well integrated. So having
sort of achieved success with ClickTracks and then allowing someone
else to take the reigns of the company, I had this great opportunity
to, well think about what do I want to do next. Well it turns out I
really liked the teaching. I really enjoyed it, and it was difficult
at the new parent company to take on that new business. The new
parent company is very much a product company. They sell ClickTracks. They sell email marketing tools. They sell tools for marketers. Difficult to sell education and knowledge within that environment,um and Michael Stebbins who is the VP of Marketing from ClickTracks. He and I just over the months we just saw this opportunity and um pretty much at the same time we both said you know we are going to go and we are going to do teaching. That is what we are going to focus on.

Brett Tabke: So what are you focusing on at MarketMotive, seminars,
conferences, trainings?

John Marshall: It's um. It's Internet marketing knowledge. So we have assembled the dream team of experts. There are experts in different disciplines; Web Analytics being one, although that's not me interestingly enough, that's Avinash Kaushik. He's the expert there or another example would be online PR so in the world of online PR a lot of people don't understand how powerful that can be and you know how easy it can be to do, so we have an expert there, and essentialy we provide the most up to date the most authoritative information that teaches you how to do that particular thing and it's all available for a single fee, monthly subscription, in our website. So it's not conferences. It's not really forums. It's a new concept that is strictly focused on teaching people and giving them good quality knowledge.

Brett Tabke: Excellent. Excellent. Interesting model. Interesting model. Um, I noticed that you didn't take the title of CEO or President. You actually took the title of Chief Technology Officer.

John Marshall: Yeah, um and that I think actually goes back to my
programming background. When Michael and I and Avinash started the
company um we, you kind of had this unique situation where um all three of us are good at slightly different things so we were able to
decide you know whats the best thing for us to do. Michael is rather
more, he has a little bit more experience than I do and he is also,
he is a little bit more measured in his approach to building a business. I tend to be am inveterate problem solver, as I said, so
and my programming background kind of comes into that, so my strength is really in my knowledge of the technology. I used to work at Netscape before I worked at ClickTracks. Another job I had before that was at Netscape, so I saw sort of how the Internet fundamentally works and so I am very familiar with that. Within the company in order for the customer to achieve results with whatever they want to learn. Let's say they want to learn about Web analytics. In Internet marketing the inescapable factors, some degree of technology gets in there, and if you try to prevent technology from getting in there you block your ability to get things done because in the end stuff doesn't work and in the end someone has got to figure out why it doesn't work. I tend to be very good and so I wanted to focus my attention on that.

Brett Tabke: So what are you spending your days studying these days?

John Marshall: Actually I'll share with you a book which I read
which I am enormously enamored with, and this is an example of what
I'm spending my time thinking about. I'm such a fan of this book that I tell everyone I meet, you should read this book if you are in the technology field in any way. The book is named Fooled by Randomness, and it is by, I believe the authors name is Nassim Nicholas Taleb. T-A-L-E-B. You can get it on Amazon. The essence of the book is how we as human beings cannot understand random events, and goes deeper than that. It's in fact we really can't understand random events because if we could life would be unbearable, and it is written by a statitition, and you know statistics. I love statistics, but it is actually incredibly applicable to everyday life, abd it helps you understand why life is more random than we give it credit for, and how its actually a good thing that we actually can't really grasp that because human beings are preconditioned to not grasp it, and it is very helpful if you are ever in a situation where you are looking at stats on your website and you scratch your head in puzzlement and then start to worry about the reason why, and the book will give you a background of knowledge so you don't worry about it, and it gives you then the ability to worry about the things that do matter. I strongly recommend it.

Brett Tabke: Alright. Alright. Well we are out of time. Thank you for being with us John.

John Marshall: Thank you. Thanks very much Brett.

Brett Tabke: I appreciate you taking the time, so.

[edited by: Vanessa_Zamora at 2:27 pm (utc) on Feb. 11, 2009]