Growth Insights for CEOs

Winning the Fraud and Cybersecurity Race: A Go-to-Market Blueprint for Competitive Edge
Fraud and cybercrime have become a systemic, trillion-dollar drag on the global economy—but the fight to turn the curve is more than a market opportunity.
Over the past few years, I have worked alongside cybersecurity and fraud-management teams in government, banking, and payments, and nothing is more satisfying than seeing a new solution stop a romance scam or prevent a pensioner from losing their life savings.
Recent Posts

Winning the Budgeting Game in Healthcare Marketing, Part One
Thu, Oct 10, 2024 — In today's competitive healthcare landscape, securing and effectively utilizing marketing budgets is crucial for success. However, traditional budgeting methods may not be sufficient today as the industry shifts from sales-heavy to marketing-focused strategies, and a plethora of data and analytics become available to help measure goal attainment. I recently spoke with Scott Alexander from Jairus Marketing about smart budgeting in today’s healthcare industry. We talked about how today’s budgets are complex, data-driven decision-making processes compared to the arbitrary and unscientific budget exercises of the past. Winning the budgeting game in healthcare requires understanding regulatory concerns, operational considerations, and clinical/hospital systems as critical pieces of the value analysis equation.

Forecasting the Best Impact on Your Marketing Dollars
Thu, Feb 8, 2024 — With the 2024 U.S. presidential election approaching, Americans are once again keenly interested in predicting outcomes. Techniques for forecasting election results using punch cards and early computers were developed in the late 1960s. Today, the use of AI has significantly improved our ability to predict election results and tabulate them accurately. Interestingly, the principles of forecasting elections and projecting the impact of marketing dollars in the business world share some similarities.
How to Right-Size your Marketing Budget and Get C-Suite Alignment – Part Two
Tue, Jul 7, 2020 — Part Two: Aligning Priorities and Spending with the CEO and CFO Part 1 of this article looked at best practices for determining optimal marketing spending levels. In part 2, we look at how marketing leaders need to align with the CEO and CFO on marketing spending priorities. To help answer this question, I’ve turned to marketing strategy and budget expert Peter Mahoney, CEO of Plannuh, Inc. Peter has decades of experience managing marketing teams, strategy and budgets, including managing a $150M annual budget at Nuance. Peter started Plannuh in 2017 to address the pain and suffering companies experience managing marketing budgets and plans with disconnected tools.
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How to Right-Size your Marketing Budget and Get C-Suite Alignment
Tue, Jun 23, 2020 — Part One: Determining Optimal Spending Levels and Overcoming Key Challenges Marketing budgets make CEOs and CFOs uncomfortable. They often are large, have lots of complicated moving parts, and their impact can be hard to measure and attribute to marketing. Marketing budgets commonly range from low single digits to 15% of revenue (and even higher for companies undergoing rapid growth). And by the way, there is no one “right” benchmark for marketing budgets. In this two-part series, marketing strategy and budget expert Peter Mahoney and CMO Jeff Loeb will pull from their experience and share tips on right-sizing marketing budgets and preparing for challenges you may encounter.

Conducting Your Orchestra: How to Achieve Opera-Sized Marketing Impact on a Sonnet-Sized Budget
Mon, Apr 18, 2016 — A funny thing happened on the way to the Orpheum: Today's flip-flop-wearing, short-attention-spanned public simply isn't looking for symphonic-sized entertainment like they used to. Ask any community orchestra conductor what brings out the most throngs these days, and they'll tell you it was the "Pops" performance of Star Wars music that far outplayed Beethoven.

3 Ways to Justify a Chief Marketing Officer
Thu, Jun 4, 2015 — I frequently talk to chief executives about the value of a focused, well-reasoned strategic marketing plan. Invariably, during these discussions, I’m hit with the big question: “But how can we measure the ROI of our marketing efforts?” It's THE question that makes many marketers shudder, because, let's face it, what they're really asking is "can you please justify your existence, your budget, and your future with this organization?"