Marketing Governance

Zig Ziglar once said, Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. I couldn’t agree more and his words underscore the advice I find myself giving to marketers again and again these days:

Don’t be afraid to fail.

Our industry is rapidly evolving, but we can’t lead the way as change agents if we’re frozen in place, paralyzed by fear. Many marketers are hard-wired to be visionaries, and perhaps that’s part of the problem. We see the end game, and so we want to get there fast. We take on too much too soon, feel overwhelmed and then crumble when the grand design starts to erode. Or we start out small, only to pull the plug at the first sign of trouble.

There is a better way. Try this:

Evaluate, execute and evolve. Read More

Aprimo, SAS and IBM have been named to the “Leaders” quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Marketing Management.  The report was published by Kimberly Collins, research vice president, and Adam Sarner, research director, CRM, at Gartner on October 27, 2011.

In addition, IBM has been named a leader in  The Forrester Wave™: Web Analytics Q4 2011 (receiving the highest scores of any vendor for both current offering and strategy), and a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Marketing Resource Management. According to IBM, they are the only ones who can claim such broad and strong market recognition for its Enterprise Marketing Management offerings. Michaela Stribling from IBM/Unica says:

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Most people don’t like change. It always has been – and it always will be – difficult.

But, as Seth Matlins points out in his post at Ad Age, refusing to change is typically even more problematic. “In marketing [...] the status quo is a slow death,” he writes. “It’s killing progress and stifling creativity and innovation. It’s the competition.” Read More

How well do you communicate with the CEO? Do you feel that you’re on the same page, in sync, working toward a shared strategic vision?

I’d like to think that with all the talk of CMO as a change agent, marketers are entering a new era of C-level communication and collaboration. I’d like to think that the marketing function is becoming increasingly integrated into overall business strategy, and that it’s being used to drive revenue growth in new and exciting ways. Read More