Wow! Social Media sure is popular. And its use as a marketing vehicle has greatly accelerated as social media networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have been inundated with Babyboomers. In fact, the research organization Forester predicts that spending on social media marketing will soon outpace spending for email marketing (which is in some … Continue reading The Maturation of Social Media Marketing →

According to studies by Kalyanaram et. al., Urban et. al, and Urban et. al., forecasted market share for consumer packaged goods and prescription anti-ulcer drugs divided by the first entrant’s market share roughly equals one divided by the square root of the order of market entry. In other words, those who aren’t first to the … Continue reading Forecasted Market Share →

Although there is something exhilarating about marketing or advertising that positions an idea in a way that you’ve never thought about it before or expresses it using a completely unique, innovative or creative method, let us not forget that there is a difference between fine art and marketing. Fine art exists for the sake of creativity. Marketing exists for the sake of achieving some organizational objective. I’d pay top dollar to see a CMO defend his/her budget (or job for that matter) playing the “but we did some really creative work” card.

As a follow up on our recent post about standardized marketing metrics, we explore the conversation as it progresses within the marketing community. Marketing NPV published an interesting article furthering the case for (and against) a standardized set of marketing metrics. In particular, they argue that CMOs should be spending more time asking a set of difficult, yet critical, questions about their marketing strategies and efforts then working to develop a standardized set of marketing metrics

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. 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.

A recent article found a stronger correlation between marketing capabilities and firm performance than those for both R&D and operations.

The problem is that there isn’t a standard set of marketing practices on which to base standardized metrics. Although nearly every organization may have a web site or a brochure, the usage of those tools is very disparate. marketing should be tied to the organization’s key performance indicators, including profitability for a profit-driven organization. Beyond that, the organization should break down its KPIs according to its sales cycle and measure marketing’s performance at every stage in that cycle.

Where organizations engaging in Tier I marketing are tactically driven, Tier II marketing is driven by strategic goals and insights. The strategy drives the tactics.

good marketing firm should help you answer 7 of these questions (1-6,9). Take a look at questions 1 through 6 and 9; would you like the answers to those questions? Do you think that knowing answers to those questions would make you more profitable?