As my partner, Art Saxby, is fond of saying, “The best marketing takes no marketing dollars.” What he means is that the stuff that makes marketing work—and work most efficiently—is done before a dollar is spent. After working with nearly 1,000 mid-market CEOs to capture or recover growth, here’s what we’ve learned:
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.
Fri, Mar 21, 2014 — What's In It for Me? How many times have we all heard the following questions about a new initiative – “What’s in it for me?” “Why do I have to change the way I am doing things?” “I am already successful, so why change what isn’t broken?” These types of questions tend to arise in greater frequency whenever an organization is looking to establish, modify and/or automate business processes and obtain better decision-making data. Having been at the forefront of driving this type of change, it is important to note that gaining organization buy-in for “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) is critical to success.
Sat, Jul 27, 2013 — Many clients find themselves making critical marketing decisions without having enough data. Even very smart people make bad decisions when they look at a small data set and extend the conclusion across the entire website, or the entire marketing strategy. One client’s marketing team was frustrated by an investor’s insistence that he knew the important keywords for the site optimization…despite detailed research which showed that there wasn’t any search on his search phrases. A CEO promptly lost 17% of his search traffic when he decided what language would go on the U.S. home page. Neither of these men’s decisions could be questioned by their teams, but they certainly got talked about internally. As the person responsible for the company’s performance, whether in sales, operations or finance, there are ways for your marketing team to contribute significantly to your goals. Web analytics helps us understand how prospects are finding you, how they evaluate a purchase decision, how many times they visit before conversion, and where they get confused and abandon the site. But unless you are asking your marketers the important questions, the ones that uncover patterns and smooth the way to purchase, much of this intelligence is not brought to the top. We recently showed a CFO that the month’s sales from paid search exactly matched the cost…a simple coincidence, but it spurred some rethinking which allowed the company to move that investment where it could be profitable in the long term. To his great credit, he is ignoring the need for immediate sales in favor of greater market share. How Can You Inspire Top Performance?
Wed, Oct 24, 2012 — Today's Guest Blog is by Barret Blank, President and CEO of BB2e
