July 9, 2010, SALT LAKE CITY—Serfwerks has been selected by the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce to present at its monthly Chamber University series on July 15th at the Zion’s Bank branch located at 462 W. 800 North in Orem, Utah. The 90-minute presentation titled De-mytified Marketing covers the basics of developing an effective marketing strategy to help marketers and small businesses achieve significantly improved marketing results. Topics covered include, performance analysis, customer segmentation, positioning, branding, competitive analysis, and performance measurement. Chamber members and attendees will learn how to quantitatively analyze the performance of their marketing efforts, identify opportunities to compete more effectively, and use marketing tactics to significantly improve their marketing results.
To register for the event, visit the Provo • Orem Chamber of Commerce’s web site at www.thechamber.org. Breakfast will be provided.
The publication touts the 100 most creative business people
It is only responsible for Fast Company to publish an article about a CMO’s balancing of creativity and analytics in its most recent issue featuring the top 100 creative people in business. After all, Serfwerks has been touting the need for using data and analytics to drive the creative process (see Unbounded Creativity parts I and II) in marketing since its founding. We’ve seen too many cool and creative ideas and approaches to marketing flounder when it comes to what matters most to business—driving bottom line results. Continue reading 'Thoughts on Fast Company’s CMO Balancing Act: Marketing Creativity vs. Analytics'»
A recent article in the Journal of Marketing (vol. 72) by Krasnikov et. al. finds a stronger correlation between marketing capabilities and firm performance (r = .35) than those for both R&D (r = .28) and operations (r = .21). The managerial implication is that “increase in marketing capability is associated with stronger improvement in firm performance than increases in operations capability and R&D capability (Hanssens, D, ed., 2009, Empirical Generalizations about Marketing Impact, p. 3).
About Correlation (r)
Correlation is a statistical measurement that determines the “goodness of fit” of a relationship between two variables. It does not determine cause. Correlation is measured on a scale from 1 to -1. The closer the “r” score is to 1, the more positive the correlation is between the two variables. The closer the “r” score is to -1, the more negative the correlation is between the two variables. The closer the “r” score is to zero, the less correlation exists between the two variables.
Last week, Marketing Profs published an insightful article by Banks and Nahama calling for the standardization of marketing metrics. Banks and Nahama wrote the following:
We are chagrined to see marketers still putting forth hundreds, even thousands, of disparate measures for their specialized fields, with most of them stopping short of linking to financial return.
It saps years of progress from the marketing discipline to hear marketing specialists, many at the top of their field, still make passionate arguments that it’s all about viewers or listeners or impressions or eyeballs or click-through or brand or awareness or pass-along or engagement, etc.
That trend seems only to be accelerating in the age of digital and social marketing.
These thousands of measurements may have use for daily activity, but when they attract such, well, un-standardized attention, they hurt marketing and they distract CMOs from their main tasks. Continue reading 'Standardized Marketing Metrics'»
Today Serfwerks announced that it is set to unveil a series of marketing training for marketing professionals, executives, entrepreneurs and business owners. Focusing on several different components of the marketing function, the training will consist of a series of workshops focused on helping businesses achieve significantly improved marketing results. The workshops will include subjects such as marketing metrics, the 360º Environmental Analysis (internal, customers, competition, etc.), go-to-market strategy development, marketing performance evaluation, and campaign optimization among others.
Serfwerks is also pleased to announce that it will be partnering with Sales Sigma Consulting to provide a workshop series that will help the marketing & sales functions improve the integration of their disparate processes to deliver improved marketing & sales results. Topics will include the organizational alignment, performance management, understanding your ideal customer criteria, and more.
The workshops will be delivered at various locations throughout the Salt Lake metro area. The workshops will also include a series that can be customized and delivered to an individual organization.
“The new training products represent a huge step forward for Serfwerks,” said Nate Gibby, Serfwerks’ co-founder and director of marketing services. “They will provide small to medium-sized business with the marketing strategies, practices and tools that were previously available only to big business with large, sophisticated marketing departments and technologies.”
More information about Serfwerks’ marketing training services will be released soon. In the mean time, those interested can sign up for more information.
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