Top Marketing Influencers in 2017 By Discipline
Have you ever wished that you were a better marketer? Many of us have. But some people have proven their worth, both in the traditional setting as well as in the digital world. Because there’s such a clear demarcation between the two, it doesn’t make sense to have one big list containing all of the top marketing influencers in 2017. That’s why we’ve split it up into two: traditional marketers and digital marketers.
Top 10 Traditional Marketing Gurus
Seth Godin
Seth Godin, born in 1960, is one of the most successful traditional marketers in history, having launched Yoyodyne in 1995 and Squidoo in 2006. His companies attracted clients from some of the largest companies in the world. Thanks to his marketing success, he’s written more than 17 books, including Tribes and Linchpin.
Philip Kotler
Another leading thinker in the world of marketing, Philip Kotler, has been teaching Marketing at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois since 1962. Kotler saw marketing as a crucial part of economics – just like price – breaking from many of his colleagues. His books include Marketing Management, Marketing Models, and The New Competition.
David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy was arguably the man who created modern advertising. If you’re new to advertising and want to learn more about it, his book, Ogilvy on Advertising, is a must-read.
Michael Porter
Michael Porter is a leading researcher and Professor at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on the competitiveness of different economic entities and has written numerous books, including Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantage.
Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh, the CEO of a major online retailer, is arguably one of the world’s greatest customer relationship managers and an expert on marketing.
James Collins
James Collins said that a company’s mission needs to be intertwined with its marketing strategy to be successful. He’s, therefore, a “big picture” type of guy, and the author of books like Built to Last that investigates which type of companies succeed over the long haul.
Gary Hemel
Gary Hemel, visiting Professor of Strategic Management and International Management at the London Business School, is an influential business strategist, author of Leading the Revolution and Competence Based Competition.
Theodore Levitt
Theodore Levitt is a Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His writing focuses on a broad range of issues in marketing, including Globalization and the marketing of intangible products.
Clayton Christensen
Clayton Christensen, the principal of consulting firm Innosight and Professor of Business Administration at Harvard, has written several books, including the Innovator’s Dilemma and the Innovator’s Solution. His work focuses on disruptive innovation and how companies can respond.
Jay Conrad Levinson
Many people believe Jay Conrad Levinson invented “guerrilla marketing.” Since rising to prominence, he’s written a large number of books on the subject.
Top 15 Digital Marketing Gurus
Neil Patel
Neil Patel has an enormous fan-base, and his work is cited all over the internet on major sites like Forbes and Business Insider. He provides fun and easy tutorials as well as serious content for anybody wanting to know more about digital marketing.
Pat Flynn
Pat Flynn runs the Smart Passive Income blog, a site dedicated to helping people earn a passive income through podcasts, resources, and insights.
Rand Fishkin
CEO of a major SEO and SEM consulting website and host of Whiteboard Friday, Rand is one of the most prolific digital marketing gurus on the web.
Avinash Kaushik
Avinash is an expert in showing business bosses how to leverage data for marketing purposes and is widely dubbed “Google’s digital marketing evangelist.”
Jeff Bullas
Jeff Bullas of the Internet Marketing Blog is a speaker, consultant, and prolific blogger, specializing in helping companies manage their corporate branding.
Danny Sullivan
Danny Sullivan, the founding editor of Search Engine Land, is now revered as one of the internet’s top digital marketing experts having begun all the way back in 1986.
Ian Cleary
Ian Cleary of Razorsocial has more than 15 years experience in the digital marketing industry and is a successful product marketer himself. He’s published in leading publications like HuffPost and Entrepreneur.com.
Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz, the editor of Seroundtable, is the person to go to for all information related to the latest Google Updates.
Larry Kim
Larry Kim launched Wordstream back in 2007. Since then, he’s offered internet consulting services to hundreds of companies and runs an influential blog.
Ann Smarty
Ann Smarty, the founder of My Blog Guest, is an active participant in the SEO community and blogger.
Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk is a serial entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author and international speaker who founded Vaynermedia, a digital service agency with many clients from the Fortune 500. Today, Vaynerchuk is one of the most sought-after public speakers in the world and has made a fortune being an early investor in companies like Twitter and Tumblr.
Tai Lopez
Tai Lopez is an investor, entrepreneur, and author who has spent his life looking for “the good life.” Ever since he was young, he’s been searching for wisdom on how to live, but came to the conclusion that in a world as complex as our own, finding answers is difficult. Since then, he’s worked to bring the world’s experts to bear on the question.
Frank Kern
Frank Kern, creator of Behavioural Dynamic Response, is an expert in automating your marketing methods and increasing the speed of your sales cycle. He currently works as an internet marketing consultant and produces world-class copy for businesses all over the world.
Russel Brunson
Brunson began his first online company while he was still in college. Since then, he’s sold more than a million copies of his book and now has a website dedicated to sharing with others how he did it.
Derek Halpern
Derek Halpern is an internet marketing expert who specializes in helping companies get more customers, help founders get people to work with them, market products so they are profitable and help improve outreach. He founded the website Social Triggers and has built some of the world’s most popular websites with more than 1 million page views per day.
