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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:
Passing the Baton: Helping Family Businesses Prosper!
Thu, Aug 2, 2012 — What Makes a Family Business Work? This past week, I had lunch with Christopher Wolfslayer, a colleague fromSovereign Bank who is in charge of Business Development, and the subject of family businesses came up. Both of us have had a lot of experience working with families that work and live together and we shared some of our perspectives.
Iterate to Target Rate: Digital Marketing Rewards Experimentation
Wed, Jul 11, 2012 — What does it mean to Iterate? Wikipedia defines it as "the act of repeating a process, usually with the aim of approaching a desired goal or target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an 'iteration,' and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration."
The Solution to Mediocre Marketing? A CMO Leading Multiple Niche Agencies
Thu, Apr 26, 2012 — It sounds like a great idea to turn your business's entire multichannel marketing campaign over to a single large marketing agency, doesn't it? You simply tell the agency, "Here's our target market, this is our brand, here's how we would like to position ourselves. Now go create the content, buy the media and help us grow." And the agency promotes itself as a "full-service" provider capable of handling every detail of your marketing from soup to nuts. So why are the results so frequently lackluster?
Too Broad a Brush: The Lack-of-Focus Problem
Wed, Apr 11, 2012 — Perhaps the most common issue I see among all kinds of businesses, from startups to large, established firms, is a lack of focus in their marketing. This generally takes the form of what I call taking too broad a brush to the market — throwing broad, scattershot strategies at the market in the hopes that some of it will stick, instead of pinpointing the most lucrative opportunities and then choosing the right applications — the right brush, if you will — to get the most of out those opportunities.
3 Steps to Improving Customer Retention
Wed, Mar 28, 2012 — As someone who once helped the pest control giant Terminix exterminate a nasty customer retention problem, I've seen what a difference a few strategic adjustments can make. So if you're facing the same issue, let me assure you that there are steps you can take to stamp it out.
3 Top Sources of Strategic Marketing Insights
Mon, Jul 18, 2011 — Effective marketing strategies that drive significant results are almost always based on key insights. Insights can come from a lot of different places – from research, from a review of operations, from an analysis of the market, from a review of available data, from experience. The critical common element to game-changing insights is perspective – looking at the situation from a customer/prospect/market point of view. Let’s look at some examples: 1. Research-based Insight At Northeast Savings, we conducted a major customer segmentation study to better understand the needs of our consumers. One of the key findings of the research was a hierarchy of concerns expressed by a key constituency – 50+ consumers. Their number one issue was their health; followed closely by their financial well being, especially as it related to being able to take care of themselves should anything happen to them physically. This insight, coupled with an understanding of the need for conservative investments (in this case, CDs) due to the risk profile of older people, led to the creation of the “Take Ten” CD. This was a traditional CD, earning market interest rates, with a twist – you could withdraw up to 10% of your principal without penalty. Northeast Savings was the first bank in the country to offer this type of CD and was recognized in USA Today. More importantly, the CD garnered $180M in new deposits in the first three months and, after a year, no one had exercised the option to withdraw principal. Consumers wanted the security of knowing that they could, but really needed to earn interest on their deposits.
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Who’s Looking Out Your Window for You?
Tue, May 31, 2011 — This week I attended a leadership event sponsored by the Greater Houston Partnership. One of the panelists was Dr. Ed Young, the Senior Pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston. In addition to being a strong man of faith, Dr Young is also a very strong leader as evidenced by the growth of Second Baptist from 300 members to approximately 60,000.
7 Tactics for Customer Closeness with Improved Customer Profiles
Thu, Dec 23, 2010 — Customer Closeness Begins with Great Customer Profiles Think about your ideal customers. Do you have customer profiles to better understand who they are? Do you know them well or are they strangers? If they’re consumers, you might know basics like age, gender, household income, and some of what they buy. If they’re a business, you probably know what industry they’re in, what their revenues are, and some trends facing them. But knowing the basics won’t tell you what issues they face in their daily lives or business, how well they are or aren’t resolving those issues, where they go to find out more about resolving things and how they go about making a decision. You need to know what motivates them, how their attitudes and actions are measured, and what their priorities are. With detailed customer profiles, you can better customer closeness for your company. How do you get better customer profiles? Get to know your customers.