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Recent Posts
5 AI Trends Every CEO Must Act On
Earlier this year, I shared takeaways from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report, which showed how AI is reshaping business at a macro level. Building on that, Google Cloud’s 2025 AI Trends highlights five forces that will directly impact companies in the year ahead.
AI is no longer experimental. It is restructuring markets, reshaping customer expectations, and redrawing competitive boundaries. Here are five AI trends CEOs are preparing for now:
Creating An “Authentic” Customer Relationship (Part 1): Three Macrotrends To Understand Right Now
Tue, Jun 30, 2015 — There’s a “Holy Grail” that the best marketers rarely mention out loud, but represents the ultimate victory in the loyalty game – keeping a customer or guest until they pass on to the great beyond. In reality, having a “customer for life” has become a concept that few can truly visualize anymore. The effect of protracted worldwide recessions, the arrival of finicky Baby Boomers and restless millennials on the scene, and the effectiveness of technology in leveling the marketplace, have threatened the existence of the concept – for those who are unwilling to make significant changes to match the cadence of today’s consumer.
Did you test your landing page before you took off?
Sat, Jun 6, 2015 — If more than 50% of your new visitors land on your homepage, you might have a problem… When people “walk in the door” of your website, what are you serving them? Have you thought about your first impression beyond the colors and design of your website?
What Digital Marketing Managers Can Learn From the Slow Food Movement
Thu, Apr 23, 2015 — The Need for an Organic Marketing Strategy Pay-Per-Click (PPC), sponsored content, and paid links have become the McDonald’s of modern marketing. With these methods, marketers hope to get traffic and, with luck, conversions, as quickly as possible and with as little effort as possible. It’s as if digital marketing had a drive-through window.
How Predictive Fitness Analytics Can Better Health & Wellness Programs
Thu, Mar 26, 2015 — Technology is changing Predictive Fitness Analytics Technology has made it possible for billions of consumers to shrink the world down to bite-sized, accessible chunks of data. But the growing popularity of health and wellness programs, predictive fitness analytics, and wearable devices is motivating users to focus not only on the world around, but the world inside as well.
Key Marketing Metrics for Revenue and Profit Growth
Fri, Mar 13, 2015 — Marketing metrics are at the essence of any business program. Key marketing metrics indicate the heights to which revenues will soar or the depths to which fortunes will plummet—as a result of your strategic business efforts.
How to Use Predictive Analytics & Lead Scoring to Supercharge Your Sales Funnel
Thu, Feb 5, 2015 — It's time to add predictive analytics and lead scoring to your sales strategy tool belt. As I have discussed in my previous articles, digital marketing tools and technologies are transforming the way businesses connect with prospective and existing customers. Adoption of these technologies is key to maintaining and gaining competitive advantage.
Random Acts of Marketing…Bad for Business
Tue, Feb 3, 2015 — Does your company practice what is sometimes called the “Hope Method” of marketing? That is when you hope you will get new clients, hope people will refer you and hope sales will increase. Most often I see business owners and CEOs practice what I call the “Random Acts of Marketing” method. In executive meetings, the management team laments that the sales team is not meeting expectations. Suddenly the table is filled with marketing experts who begin chanting a litany of marketing ideas (although all too often there isn’t anyone with real marketing expertise in the room). We need a new brochure. Our branding is killing us. The website is tired. Let’s run some advertisements. We need to do social media. Let’s run a sale. We need to do more trade shows. Let’s do some press releases and get an article about us in a trade publication. Then after earnest debate, someone in marketing (or someone posing as marketing) is tasked with one or two of these programs. Voila! You have just witnessed the birth of random acts of marketing. Given that these tactics are born of pain rather than an integrated strategic marketing plan with measurements, they rarely yield profitable outcomes. When CEOs approach me as a CMO consultant, they often tell me they have tried everything to grow their business (and they probably have) but are not seeing the results they expected. They want to know if “I should do more” of whatever the tactic du jour happens to be for them. Being the pragmatist that I am, I usually ask them a series of questions:
The Difference between CEOs who Manage vs. Lead
Tue, Jan 27, 2015 — A long-time client surprised me last week. He called to update me on his pursuit of a new position within his company and, in the course of our conversation, said that his CEO “is an extremely talented manager but not much of a leader.” The assessment itself didn’t surprise me. I have known this CEO for over 30 years and agree completely. What did surprise me was hearing my friend make the distinction. We have often talked about the differences between managing and leading. Like most people, however, he generally uses the terms interchangeably and doesn’t really make a distinction day-to-day—just the kind of thing that drives leadership experts like John Kotter crazy. For over 40 years, Kotter has been on a mission to get people to think about the distinction between management and leadership. Our ongoing transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, however, has made Kotter’s work much more difficult. We still need to understand the difference between management and leadership, but it is increasingly difficult to be an effective CEO without also being a good leader.
How to Best Leverage Marketing Technologies in 2015
Thu, Jan 22, 2015 — I was recently asked my thoughts on how technology and digital trends will shape the future of marketing. As I pondered this question, I took note of all of the ways that I am digitally connected to the outside world. My laptop, smartphone, phablet, tablet, and e-reader were all dripping digital data to some unseen force through my WiFi connection. A fitness tracker awaited the opportunity to observe and report my next activity. Acting as marshals for many of these resources were my modem and router, which collected the needed inputs and outputs and converted my actions into trackable information.