Archive | March, 2013

We have come a long way

Marketing has come a long way. People have been selling things and services since early man. But how we market these things has changed a lot through the years and ages.

Modern marketing hasnt been around that long, it started  at the early 20th century, according to Marketo. As we entered the modern industrial age, the amount of goods became greater than the number of available customers, and so did the competition because suddenly had a choice. Modern marketing was born.

In time, with the emergence of new technology, marketing had to adapt. First, radio shook up how companies did their marketing. Then television made a huge impact. Then the Internet revolutionized not only how people did business but also how they live.

To illustrate technological advancements that have changed the course of marketing, The Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation.

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The Evolution of the CMO

The CMO now a days is quite a different one then twenty years ago. Digital and social innovation and the availability of better and more accurate data have affected everything: the way things are marketed and sols.

In this  two-minute video [x+1] CEO John Nardonne tells how he thinks the role has changed since he began his career in the 1980s marketing for Pepsi.

Drowning in data

The modern technology, and especially digital technology like e-mail, websites, mobile and social media, are a blessing for marketers. Not ever before were they able to gather so much data on what they do. But, this also comes with a danger. The flood of data is large, marketers are awash in data. Marketing analytics is the way to take control over this flood. In the 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report MarketingSherpa the importance of marketing analytics is addressed.

Over 1.100 marketers are surveyed for this research. It provides insight into analytics for all kinds of marketing channels.

According to Marketingssherpa the surveyed marketers provided some interesting insights, and also highlighted areas where marketers could improve in taking advantage of this valuable marketing asset.

The availability of marketing analytics data is promising with 79% reporting having average, significant and even vast amounts of client interaction data to analyze. Only 3% reported having no analytics data at all. An overwhelming majority — 97% — of marketers have some amount of marketing analytics data to work with.

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Taming the Chaos of Distributed Marketing

Distributed Marketing

In a recent survey by the Aberdeen Group, 67% of respondents said their marketing operates in a distributed marketing environment. By the traditional definition, distributed marketing refers to a marketing model in which both a central corporate marketing department and “local” organizations or business units share authority and responsibility for making marketing decisions and performing marketing activities. The stereotypical example of a distributed marketing organization is a franchise network, but distributed marketing models exist in many kinds of organizations.

The reality is, most large companies, particularly global enterprises, use some form of a distributed marketing model. For example, marketing operations is many multinational companies are highly fragmented. Most global enterprises have regional or national marketing organizations in addition to a central corporate marketing department. These regional and/or local marketing organizations often play a significant role in the creation of marketing content and the execution of marketing programs. They usually hire their own language service providers for translation services, and they may also contract with marketing agencies to create original content or adapt “corporate” content for the local market.

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Are you already pinning?

All eyes are on Pinterest, the social network that lets users collect and share images found on the Web by pinning them on virtual pinboards. The images span a variety of categories, from fashion, crafts, cooking, décor, fitness, and more. Users can follow the pinboards of friends and brands for inspiration and repin the images onto their own pinboards.

Today, Pinterest is quickly becoming the fastest-growing social media site based on its huge popularity with women, as well as its unlimited potential as a marketing tool for businesses. Pins help companies promote their products, develop their brand personalities, drive tremendous referral traffic to their websites, and gain exposure among the Pinterest community.

In this video MDG Advertising shows the facts, figures, and findings from its popular Pin It To Win It infographic and shows why marketers should keep a close eye on this new marketingchannel.

Leaner, faster and better marketing

Dr. Robert Shaw is a renowned businesswriter on marketing. He also is a consultant on the field of marketing, particularly Marketing performance measurement and management and Database marketing.

In his work two key elements come forward.

  1. Marketing automation: the idea that the marketing function should embrace IT to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Shaw has tracked the uses and abuses of IT in marketing for over 20 years and defined best practice in this field.
  2. Marketing performance measurement and management. Shaw identified the need for marketing to become more measurable and accountable and his researches continue to define best practice in this field.

In this ten minute interview, conducted by Mayer Becker, Shaw sheds his light on Leaner, faster and better marketing.

Common flavors and snake oil

Ross Graber serves as Research Director for the Marketing Operations Strategies service at SiriusDecisions. He brings over 15 years of marketing experience with focus spanning marketing measurement, demonstrating ROI, data management, process development, marketing technology, customer marketing and sales enablement. He sheds his light on measurement tools. The web is littered with people who know best for you and your organisation. They think they know what your marketing measurement needs to be like and look like.

But dont be fooled, Graber says. There’s way too much bad advice being dispensed from sources that you’d expect to be credible. Whether this advice is well intentioned or simply snake oil, b-to-b marketers need to be able to spot bad measurement advice and reject it.

In his article Marketing Measurement Snake Oil he explains three key points which any marketer should consider when shopping for tools to measure your marketing.

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Bridging the Gaps Between Marketing and the C-Suite

Outside looking in: the CMO struggles to get in sync with the C-suite is based on a global survey of marketing and non-marketing executives from 19 industries in 42 countries, and on in-depth interviews with senior executives from major companies.

The EIU report shows that a significant gap exists between CMOs and the rest of the C-suite regarding marketing’s strategic priorities. EIU asked survey participants to identify marketing’s top priority. The filelink:file0 below shows how both CMOs and non-marketing executives responded

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Are you easily stressed?

Are you easily stressed? No? Theres nothing that makes you sweat? Nivea decides to try some crazy advertising for their products, would you keep your cool?

Speed and agility

Matt Jauchius, CMO of Nationwide, discusses how he brought speed and agility to his marketing organization. The first step was to focus on changing parts of the organization rather than the entire organization. He hired new talent and made process changes. For decision making to be fast, a set of capabilities needs to be centralized while still empowering edge units that interact with customers.