.png?width=1500&height=398&name=CO_Corporate%20Logo%202021_4C_HOR_FNL-1%20(1).png)
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:
Sales vs. Marketing: Chicken or Egg First?
Thu, Nov 15, 2018 — What comes first, adding a sales person or having ready prospects and opportunities to pursue? I once worked for a company where Sales held all the power – more than product development or finance and certainly more than marketing. I recall a discussion with a long-time senior executive about the amount of marketing investment required for the company to profitably grow. She commented that the company had a tried and true method of driving growth. “We don’t need to invest in marketing. For every sales person we add, then revenue will grow!”, she proudly exclaimed. This had indeed been true at one time in the company’s history, but along with that revenue growth came increased expenses and decreasing sales productivity. The company eventually went through an inevitable and painful exercise of downsizing a much too large sales force.
Omnichannel or Tunnel Vision?
Tue, Nov 6, 2018 — Journey with me back a few years, to a time when books were bought at a bookstore, clothing purchased at an apparel shop, and the concept of competitive shopping was limited to letting our fingers do the walking. Today, consumers are fully – and indelibly – in control. Selling our stuff to this finicky lot requires a trip to their dimension – or we risk them not hearing us. That’s why today’s CEO is being assaulted by entreaties to institute an omnichannel strategy as an essential piece of their competitive marketing plan.
Are You Using Your KPIs Appropriately: Report Card or Predictive Data?
Fri, Oct 19, 2018 — Just a few weeks ago, I enjoyed yet another screening of the 1976 movie The Gumball Rally. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a slapstick satire about a wild and crazy cross-country race. The competition starts in New York City, with a goal to finish in the shortest amount of time. During the trek, a driver named Franco rips the review mirror off his windshield and dramatically announces the first rule of Italian driving: “What’s behind me is not important!” Even though I’ve heard this line plenty of times, I couldn’t help but chuckle. This belief is not only applicable to the business world – but appropriate when creating and measuring your company’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). According to Investopedia, a KPI is a set of measurable data that a company uses to gauge its performance over time. Examples include return on marketing investment, customer lifetime value (LTV), and customer acquisition cost (CAC). There are endless performance indicators you can use to measure your business goals.
3 Marketing Mistakes Technologists Often Make
Fri, Oct 12, 2018 — Over the years, I’ve enjoyed working with some brilliant minds from the technology world. From my early days in Telecom and the pioneering days of interactive TV, to the groundbreaking revolution in eCommerce, smart technologists have astounded me with their vision and capabilities. As marketers, however, I find that they often fall short in a few areas. First, technologists tend to err on the side of verbosity, telling people everything their product can do. This lack of focus often results in confusion, and worse yet, a failure to connect to the prospects’ needs. Sometimes this problem occurs in the development stage as a result of what I like to call, “because we can” technical development. In this case, the developers decide to throw in every feature they can think of—whether or not their customers care. But often, wordiness is simply the result of excitement about all the things the company can do.
Shift Your Brand Perception – Tips for Getting Your Positioning to ‘Stick’
Thu, Oct 4, 2018 — After reading my previous posts, you’re almost on your way to productively and energetically leveraging your brand’s perception to drive company growth and profitability. Our previous topics of focus covered the specific impact that brand perception can have on the bottom line, the need for clear positioning as the foundation for communicating about your company, and some keys to arming others with that positioning so they can get your story into the market. Now, I’ll review the most important tips on what it takes to get your positioning to stick – to successfully change brand perception to accelerate growth and profitability.
Shift Your Brand Perception – Rally Others to Tell Your Story
Thu, Sep 27, 2018 — After reading my previous posts, you’re almost on your way to productively and energetically leveraging your brand’s perception to drive company growth and profitability. Our previous topics of focus covered the specific impact that brand perception can have on the bottom line and the need for clear positioning as the foundation for communicating about your company. It’s now time to examine effective ways to arm others with that refined market positioning. By understanding your story, employees, customers and other influencers will help you communicate this information to your marketplace. This strategy takes some of the pressure off your sales team. It also makes it easier to proliferate your vision, as well as the value of your product and service offerings. One of the biggest challenges small to mid-size companies face is promoting their company with limited resources. Not everyone has massive advertising budgets to flood the market, so you need to work smarter to get the most out of your marketing spend. One way to do that is to more effectively leverage your employee base and others who have influence in your industry. It’s much more powerful when others can tell the story for you.
Shift Your Brand Perception - Start with Getting Your Positioning Right
Thu, Sep 20, 2018 — In my previous post, we reviewed how brand perception specifically impacts company growth and profitability. Now we’ll cover the keys to building the foundation for communicating about your company. When companies start out, they usually have a very clear understanding of who their customer is, the problem they are solving, and possibly, how they are different. This is typically because they have a single product for a single market segment where they’ve achieved some level of success. But over time, as companies and markets evolve: The competition becomes more intense, either through matching capabilities, building new capabilities or new competitors appearing. Customer needs and priorities change. What was important to a customer 3 years ago may not be as important today. The company enters new market segments or geographies. There may be subtleties between industries, regions and countries in terms of priorities and pain points. The company broadens its portfolio of offerings. As more products are developed and more problems addressed, there might be new buyers and other selling dynamics.
Building a Long-Lasting Relationship Between Hispanic Consumers and Your Business
Tue, Sep 18, 2018 — When a business looks at how to approach the U.S. Hispanic consumer, it is quite easy for it to rely on commonly known facts: Family is important to them, their households are larger, and they over-index usage of mobile devices to gather information and shop online. Let’s not forget that they love soccer – and are deeply religious. However, to develop the most meaningful connection, it’s essential to dig a little deeper than the obvious. The same analytical rigor and behavioral curiosity we apply to our core US consumer (also known as the general population) needs to be involved in studying the Hispanic consumer and how they relate to your category. First, we’ll begin with an examination of the data, then uncover insights to understand what truly matters to this exquisite target.
CEOs, Are You Confident in Your Marketing Team’s Ability to Drive Growth?
Mon, Sep 17, 2018 — While most mid-sized companies have invested in dedicated, in-house marketing teams, many executives are not pleased with the return on investment. A survey conducted by The Fournaise Marketing Group revealed that 73 percent of CEOs believe their marketing team is not capable of generating enough growth. An astonishing 80 percent of the CEOs polled don’t trust their marketing teams. There is widespread concern that the marketing function is unable to deliver a positive ROI for the department’s spending. CEOs also doubt marketing’s ability to use data to make informed decisions. You may have some of the same concerns for your marketing organization. Much has changed in marketing over the last several years, but its core purpose has stayed the same. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the “activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” Despite the challenges of an ambiguous and rapidly evolving business landscape, marketers must drive growth and prove their value to their company. This can be accomplished by focusing on marketing’s core responsibility: delivering value to customers and stakeholders.