Our Most Popular Posts of 2019

This will be my last post of 2019, and I want to thank everyone who has spent some of his or her valuable time reading this blog. My goal for this blog has always been to provide content that readers will find informative, thought-provoking, and useful, and I've been immensely gratified by the attention...

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Four Keys to Strong Customer Relationships

A recent report by Accenture Interactive provides several interesting insights on both the fragility of B2B seller-buyer relationships and what B2B companies need to do to strengthen long-term customer relationships. Service is the new sales was based on interviews with 748 business buyers and...

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Think "Close and Deep" to Maximize Growth

During the Cold War, U.S. Army leaders in Europe faced a disconcerting situation. Their mission was to defend NATO member nations in the event of an attack by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The problem was, U.S./NATO ground forces were greatly outnumbered. During this period, Soviet army doctrine was to...

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How to Identify Revenue Growth Opportunities

Driving consistent, profitable revenue growth is one of the most persistent challenges that business and marketing leaders face. The key word in that sentence is "consistent." Many companies can produce substantial revenue growth sporadically or over a short period of time. But it's exceptionally difficult...

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How to Address the Growth Challenge

Growth is to a business organization what oxygen is to a living organism. It is the life force of the organization. For decades, sustained profitable growth has been the linchpin of long-term business prosperity. Profitable growth creates a virtuous cycle of forces that supports and drives business...

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Why Your Marketing Content Should Be "Job Focused"

The first step to designing an effective marketing strategy and creating compelling marketing content is to understand what your potential customers are trying to accomplish when they purchase products or services like those you provide. In most cases, people don't buy a product or service because they...

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Two Ways to Improve Your ROI Credibility

With the fourth quarter of 2019 well underway, many marketing leaders will have already started planning for 2020. In most cases, the planning process will include an analysis of how well marketing performed in 2019. and many marketing leaders will use return on investment (ROI) as the primary tool...

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A Fresh Look at Millennial B2B Buyers

The role of millennials in B2B buying decisions, and their distinctive attitudes and behaviors as business buyers have become major topics of interest for B2B marketing and sales professionals over the past five years. Since 2014, numerous research studies - including studies by the IBM Institute for...

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Two Observations on the New CMI/MarketingProfs Content Marketing Survey

A few days ago, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs published the findings of their latest content marketing survey. The B2B Content Marketing 2020:  Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America report is based on 679 survey responses from content marketers and marketing executives...

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New Insights on the State of Marketing Technology

A recent survey by WARC and BDO (with interviews by the University of Bristol) provides more evidence that the role of technology in marketing is continuing to grow. Martech:  2020 and Beyond is based on a survey of more than 750 brands and agencies located in North America, the U.K., Europe, and...

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Three Key Takeaways from Gartner's New CMO Spend Survey

Gartner has just published the results of its 2019-2020 CMO Spend Survey. The research report is based on survey responses from 342 marketing executives in North America and the U.K. at companies with $500 million to $5 billion or more in annual revenue.The Gartner study produced several valuable data...

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Where Marketers are Missing the Mark with Customers

The New York chapter of the American Marketing Association has just published a research report that should be required reading for marketers. The Techlash is Here report addresses several aspects of marketing in the world's two largest economies - the United States and China. While the findings about...

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When "Prove You Know Me" Personalization is Essential

A few months ago, I published a post arguing that marketers who want to improve the effectiveness of personalized marketing should focus primarily on making personalization pragmatically useful to recipients. This argument was based on the results of several research studies, including a 2018 survey...

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Why It's So Hard for Companies to Change

In 2013, Scott Brinker, Hubspot's VP Platform Ecosystem, and the author of the widely-read Chief Marketing Technologist blog, published a post that introduced Martec's Law. In essence, Martec's Law states that technology changes at an exponential (very fast) rate, but organizations change at a logarithmic...

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The Power and Peril of Performance Metrics

Measuring performance has been a major feature of the business landscape ever since double entry accounting made its appearance in the 14th or 15th century. "You can't manage what you can't measure" is one of the most widely-repeated cliches in the business world, and it's been an article of faith for...

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