Business Growth Strategies For CEOs: Top CMOs On Marketing Strategy Implementations (68)

Beating Industry Benchmarks

Fri, Jul 18, 2025 | Posted by Grant Johnson

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.

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6 Ways Mobile Wallets Can Reshape Your Customer's Experience

Wed, Jun 12, 2013 — This blog elaborates on Richard Browne’s article in CSP Magazine entitled, 'Future-Proofing Your New Site.' The mobile wallet revolution is poised to happen over the next 12 months. Besides the major branded entrants like Square, Google, PayPal and ISIS, there are now over a hundred other mobile wallets announced or in service. The mobile wallet has the potential to reshape your business; here are six benefits that create opportunities for you to improve your customers’ experience.

Hire Slow and Fire Fast Part I

Sat, Jun 8, 2013 — Today's blog is by guest blogger Kevin Dincher. 25 years ago as a new manager, I had to fire an employee for the first time. When I inherited her, she was a long-time employee with a lengthy history of poor quality work, low productivity, negativity and troublesome relationships. Firing her was drawn-out and excruciating—but I learned early on the importance of hiring the right people—and not hanging on to the wrong ones.

Quid Pro Quo? Or Quid Pro NO? Discounting Can Be Dangerous!

Wed, Jun 5, 2013 — What is "Quid Pro Quo? Wikipedia defines it as an exchange of goods or services, where one transfer is contingent upon the other. Phrases with similar meaning include: "give and take", "tit for tat", and "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." Recently, I have been involved in several discussions with CEOs on charging for their goods and services. The discussions weren’t concerning the actual price for the services, but the ultimate cost between the buyer and the seller. Let’s share some examples. (with the names changed to protect the innocent or, in some of these cases, guilty parties) The Stories One CEO—I will call him Joe—runs an executive consulting firm. He had a problem with a leak in his house. He needed immediate help and called one of his clients Sam, who is the owner of a construction company. Sam immediately sent someone out to fix the leak but didn’t send Joe a bill. When Joe asked him about it, Sam responded, “No problem. You’re a friend. Don’t worry about it.” Adele owns a restaurant in town. Bill, an influential colleague held several events there but has been ignoring the bills Adele has sent. The amounts are significant. Adele is worried about pressing Bill too hard as he could possibly react strongly and hurt her restaurant business. Bill has been referring business to her. Tim is the CEO of a local accounting firm. The firm needed a new website. He contacted Rachel who owns a website design firm, and they discussed a cost-effective approach to building the site. They decided to exchange professional services rather than money, so he is now taking care of her accounting and she is taking care of his website. Any of these sound familiar? Have you encountered any similar situations? For a another perspective on this, read this legal blog.

True Business Continuity-Why just backing up your data can let your business down

Sat, May 18, 2013 — Today's blog is by guest blogger Mark Chinsky. Part I: The following blog is the first in a 2 part blog series on the problems with today’s backup solutions, and why you need to think about business continuity solutions instead. Even if some of your business solutions are ‘cloud based’ such as Salesforce.com or Hubspot, you still likely have other servers in your office(s) that are used for other business critical functions like email, accounting, manufacturing, collaboration, file storage and the like. Because of this, virtually all (sane) businesses have some type of backup solution. Whether it be tapes, hard drives, or even with a cloud service like Carbonite or Mozy. However, what many people don’t realize is that backup solutions are designed to allow you to retrieve you data in the event of a data loss, not to actually minimize your down time in anyway.

5 Steps to Building Customer Service into your Company's DNA

Wed, May 15, 2013 — This is an updated version of an article published in Yahoo Voices by Barbara Fowler, CMO and partner at Chief Outsiders "Make new Friends but Keep the Old Ones" True for Customers too. Positive customer service experiences are the key to building and maintaining a business. Multiple studies have repeatedly concluded that gaining new customers is much more difficult than keeping your current customers. A delicate balance must be kept between actions that go above and beyond in retaining customers and actions that focus on immediate costs or promote profitability for an organization. Just as important as this balance is the integration of a high quality customer service approach or mindset throughout all departments of a business.

"I Don't Know Anyone Here" - 8 Tips on What Not To Do!

Sun, May 12, 2013 — This is a revised blog, originally posted on UNDER30CEO. I am sure most of you have been in a situation similar to mine. Last month, I attended Social Slam in Knoxville, Tenn. I knew absolutely no one who was going to the conference, but I decided to attend because I believed it was relatively close to my new home in Charleston, S.C. (Seven hours later, in a tremendous rainstorm, I arrived. I stand corrected.) The experience gave me the opportunity to adopt a fresh perspective on attending a conference as an unknown. I knew it would be hard to go and meet people, but I figured, “So what? I’m an adult.” I was up for it — and you should be, too. Pushing myself beyond my comfort zone improved my networking skills and expanded my circle in new ways.

Whole Brain Brand Positioning

Fri, May 10, 2013 — There are innumerable articles, books and classes devoted to aspects of developing a distinctive brand positioning. And, why not? Your brand positioning should drive all communication, and, as a wise man once told me — EVERYTHING communicates. However, the elements of brand positioning have become disjointed and disconnected over time, as focus shifts form one aspect to another. Also, it feels like brand positioning has become unnecessarily over-complicated by the scholarly focus, causing the project of sitting down to develop a new brand position to end up on the “someday, maybe” pile for many busy CEOs. Developing a differentiated brand positioning is nothing more than making sure your brand occupies a unique, distinctive and relevant place in your target customer’s mind (get it? Brain, Mind…), so they consistently choose your brand in preference to that of your competition. It allows for consistency of message and experience across time and across management. It articulates your brand’s DNA across all aspects of the brand — from your brand identity/logo to packaging, from creative and media to distribution strategies, and from promotional offers to new product development plans.