Growth Insights for CEOs

Beating Industry Benchmarks
In my previous blog, I discussed a fast way to assess relative marketing performance, and covered proven approaches to improving six industry benchmark-based Key Performance Indicators (reach, share, engagement, loyalty, pipeline, and progression) that can boost overall marketing effectiveness. Today, I’m going to review some of the key findings from recent research around Marketing benchmarks. I’ll select key metrics from each of these three benchmarks and their implications for optimizing marketing performance.
Recent Posts

The Brave New World of New Markets - Five Steps to Conquering New Business Frontiers
Wed, Sep 24, 2014 — If there’s one thing that has been constant in the history of America, it’s the spirit of exploration. From Lewis and Clark to Dora the Explorer, our tales of wanderlust have been well-chronicled and have led to great advancements in science, medicine – and business. If you think that’s a heady legacy to live up to, you’re right. However, as responsible business stewards, the need to grow and expand is what fuels our passion to seek new markets for our business. As you consider whether the time is right to expand your company into new markets – either geographically or by customer type – ponder this. According to a study by KPMG, 90 percent of U.S. business executives involved with business development and corporate strategy have seen revenues increase from high growth and emerging markets. This is a sure sign that a broader expansion will open our business up to a world of new possibilities – and financial rewards.

Customer Empowered Advisory Boards
Tue, Sep 23, 2014 — As a CEO of a small business, you may have either given thought to or have already established a Customer Advisory Board. The rather cliched approach is to hold a semi annual or annual meeting with the most senior customer executives from your most strategic accounts. The agenda is thick with company executives who present current and near-term products and services and solicit feedback from these influential and important customers. Then everyone plays a round of golf or some other participatory sport, has a few drinks and hopefully creates some strong friendships outside the confines of the business. When it's done, you probably pat yourselves on the back that you've cemented relationships with your top customers by keeping them involved, engaged and "in the know" about your plans. Most Customer Advisory Board programs justify their existence based on the ROI they deliver to the company like key accounts retained, new business booked from members, strategic insights gained and costly mistakes avoided by acting on their input.

CEOs: Want More Energy? Manage These 5 Buckets
Mon, Sep 22, 2014 — The annual “fill-up” for my leadership bucket comes every August when I attend the Global Leadership Summit – an event that reaches 180,000 leaders around the world. With presentations from amazing leaders – this year including Geoffrey Immelt, Carly Fiorina, Tyler Perry, Patrick Lencioni, plus a number of faith-based CEOs and even pastors – the event covers the gamut for honing leadership skills. Bill Hybels, the man behind this 20-year happening and whose messages are always a highlight, released his new book “Simplify” coincident with the Summit. The premise of the book is this: Leaders who focus on 5 simple areas of their lives will find more clarity and activate more energy to accomplish their God-given purpose on earth. Wow.
Stay up-to-date with the latest from Chief Outsiders

Why Executives Should Develop Visible Experts within Their Firm
Wed, Sep 17, 2014 — Regardless of your industry, your firm can likely identify with goals like: Generate more leads, Increase revenue and Boost brand recognition. Many of your marketing efforts are likely designed to achieve those goals or similar measurements of success. But there’s one approach that firms often overlook that can achieve all of these goals—and more. This approach is thought leadership marketing and the development of Visible Experts. These experts are the professionals who give keynote addresses at industry conferences, write the defining book in your field and have established themselves as the go-to authorities.

Marketing Budget: 7 Benchmarking Questions To Ask
Wed, Sep 3, 2014 — How much do you allocate for a marketing budget? One of the first questions many clients ask is how much to appropriate for a marketing budget. The quick answer for marketing budget allocation is a target of between 3 -8% of a company’s overall sales – with 5% often cited as the norm based upon a review of a range of benchmarking and peer group studies.
Dos and Don’ts of Marketing Automation
Tue, Sep 2, 2014 — Marketing automation is a powerful tool with the ability to greatly increase your conversions. However, in order for marketing automation to be effective, there are certain do’s and don’ts that you should understand, including how it fits into the larger context of your business. Based on information collected from experts in the marketing field, let’s look at the specific do’s and don’ts for marketing automation "Marketing automation plays a key role in the customer/client acquisition process as it automates lead scoring, routing of qualified leads, nurturing those that are not ready to buy, and greater transparency into prospect/customer behavior on its own. It is important that a CMO and his/her team understand that marketing automation, as with any technology solution, is an enabler to their business strategy vs. a strategy on its own. Read the full article here.

Are You Committing Marketing Malpractice? 4 Ways That CEOs Miss the Marketing Mark
Wed, Aug 27, 2014 — A prospective client recently reached out to me, having found me by searching for fractional chief marketing officers on the Internet. This C-suite executive, who shall remain nameless, dispensed with formalities and said, “I am interviewing 15 marketing firms, and I’d like a list of things that we could do for $20,000.” After I took a beat to absorb his “unique” approach, I responded as any ethical Chief Marketing Officer should – calmly explaining that there are many, many steps required before we could even begin to develop a budget to spend those $20,000 hard-earned marketing dollars – things like identifying goals, objectives, priorities and the like.

Why Millennial Talent Seems to Be Always Looking for the Next Best Thing
Thu, Aug 21, 2014 — Every generation seems destined to be the most misunderstood generation. This was true for Baby Boomers, Gen X and is especially applicable when attempting to understand the motivations and values of the Millennial generation (also referred to as Gen Y). We’ve likely read about how Millennials grew up on technology and are dependent upon it. We could easily argue with them about their worldviews. While Millennials may be cast as the most misunderstood generation, they’re quickly becoming the most studied and researched generation. Yet despite all the insights we’ve gained, it’s interesting that most Baby Boomers infer they simply don’t understand a Millennial’s perspective on life and work. On the surface, Millennials may come across as being irresponsible, entitled, disengaged, arrogant, idealistic and overly confident. While some of these may be appropriate, from a practical perspective, Millennials tend to be competent, bright and highly focused. The chasm between the generations being, Millennials hold a significantly different worldview about life, their careers and what they expect from their employers.

Aligning Your Stars
Mon, Aug 4, 2014 — The Recipe for Revenue Success: Sales and Marketing Alignment As someone who loves to cook, today I am sharing a tried and true recipe for a successful lead generation program. I marvel at the fact that CEOs continue to be disappointed by their marketing outcomes. In fact, 70 percent cite that Marketing isn’t delivering for them as expected. Art Saxby, Chief Outsiders CEO, has expertly covered the difference between Sales and Marketing in his recent blog so we have clarity between the two functions and expectations. This standout recipe calls for Marketing and Sales to be in perfect harmony. To achieve this requires collaboration and agreement on a number of definitions, targets and metrics—and leadership from the CEO. I was recently speaking to a highly experienced, top industry performing Sales Representative who told me, “I never got a decent lead from a marketing team EVER – I had to develop all of my own opportunities. Yes, I got dozens of business cards – but they weren’t close to what I would consider a lead.” This is a fairly common theme I often hear from sales executives. The marketing team delivered against their “Lead targets,” which were the names scanned off suspects walking by the company booth at a trade show. So what’s the solution? Fundamental Marketing and Sales leader dialogue and agreement is the difference between success and failure. Marketing needs to be seamlessly filling the top part of any sales funnel and Sales needs to be executing the follow-up engagement.