Growth Marketing Glossary

MarketingProfs

proper noun

Where B2B marketers go to actually learn the job — professor-grade rigor, practitioner-grade usefulness.

MPfounded by Allen WeissB2B training · community
Site mark — MarketingProfs
Founded
~2000, by Allen Weiss
CCO
Ann Handley
Conference
MarketingProfs B2B Forum
Model
Free content + PRO membership + training

Forms & parts of speech

Profs · shorthand
The community's name for it.
"The Profs B2B Forum talk on positioning is worth the registration alone."

What it is

MarketingProfs is the marketing-education company founded around 2000 by Allen Weiss — a marketing academic turned entrepreneur — on the premise the name encodes: professor-grade marketing knowledge delivered practically. The engine is training (courses, the PRO membership, corporate programs), daily articles, and the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, the field's defining B2B marketing conference. Ann Handley, its Chief Content Officer, made it her home base and its newsletter voice the industry's most imitated.

Why marketers rely on it

It occupies the B2B education niche the consumer-marketing press underserves — lead gen, sales alignment, long-cycle content, martech selection — with a teaching DNA rather than a news cycle. The Handley association compounds it: Everybody Writes' craft standards run through the publication, and the B2B Forum became the community's annual reunion.

How to use it well

Use the free layer for steady B2B fundamentals, point new B2B hires at its training paths (more structured than blog-hopping), and treat the B2B Forum as the networking spend with the highest practitioner density. The newsletter is worth studying as a FORM — personality-driven email that earns its open rates.

Worked example. A product-led startup hires its first marketer, a B2C-trained generalist staring at a 9-month sales cycle. The MarketingProfs path: the B2B fundamentals training first, the sales-enablement and ABM course tracks next, the newsletter for ambient instruction. Within a quarter the marketer stops importing consumer-playbook instincts (volume, virality) and starts building the buying-committee content B2B actually requires — the education was cheaper than the first bad campaign.
Failure modes to watch. Expecting breaking news from a teaching publication; buying PRO and reading like a feed instead of following the course paths; and copying its newsletter voice without the years of consistency that earned it.

Synonyms & antonyms

Synonyms

MarketingProfs

Origin & history

Allen Weiss — a USC marketing professor with Stanford research roots — founded it around 2000 to bridge academic marketing knowledge and practice, the name a direct promise. Ann Handley joined early as Chief Content Officer (claiming the title before the industry had one), defining its voice for two decades.

Etymology: source.

Usage trends

Search interest for this term over the last five years:

View interest-over-time on Google Trends →

Common questions

What is MarketingProfs?
A B2B marketing education company founded by Allen Weiss — training, articles, the PRO membership, and the B2B Forum conference.
Who is its best-known voice?
Ann Handley, its Chief Content Officer and author of Everybody Writes.
What is the B2B Forum?
MarketingProfs' annual conference — the B2B marketing community's defining practitioner event.

Related tools & calculators

Resources & people to follow

Curated, non-competitor resources verified per term.

Related training

Disciplines

Areas of marketing where marketingprofs is a core concern:

Sources

  1. trendsGoogle Trends — "marketingprofs"