
The Incentive Compensation Process
The story of front office automation is shifting from data to process, but the idea is so new that you’d be hard pressed to identify a movement by that name. However, I am happy to coin a term and if you consider the developments of the last decade a clear picture emerges. CRM and other […]

Which Tools Do You Use?
Which Tools Do You Use? One of the subtexts to the marketing automation explosion is analytics. Having a CRM system might make you wonder why marketing automation is needed at all but the reasons boil down to analysis and improved data collection. Let me share some information with you from a new marketing study I […]

So if the rockstars have gone, what’s left in the analyst industry?
As we revealed last week, most of the big analyst personalities have seemingly fled the analyst industry… many for the riches on offer from their vendor clients, clearly seeing more ROI from employing them, as opposed to purchasing their firm’s services. However, this hasn’t prevented the remaining legacy purveyors of analyst services from making a living. So […]

Research: Spotlight on social media risk management
A new report by Altimeter Group sheds light on the importance of risk management as applied to social media.

Video and A Love Story
e have been doing a lot of work with videos for marketing purposes, which is a new area for me. Couple of things I have learned: 1) Short is better. 2) Video engagement metrics are evolving but in general web site visitors really like video content. 3) Generalize as much as possible because changing existing […]

Marketing Automation Consolidation?
Many VC’s and other practitioners of the Art of Startup view consolidation as a normal part of the evolution of a market. At first there are lots of companies founded in a space and lots of hype. Over time, a handful emerge as leaders. Once the handful is obviously head and shoulders above the rest, […]
Storming the Castle Chapter 2: How I Gave Up Finger Painting and Decided to Develop a Category.
Folks here’s an excerpt from Chapter 2. Enjoy. Comments as always are welcome. Arts and Crafts Time Is Over Well that’s what you’re CMO should be saying. Look, time and time again, marketing has been relegated to the tail end…

Do You Need Enterprise-Envy?
As so often happens, a discussion of the Enterprise Irregulars group I belong to has prompted a post of my own. Every business needs to spend some time thinking about what kinds of customers it doesn’t want to attract. This kind of thinking is alien to most, but it is essential to successful sales and […]

Marketing Spend — The Straight Dope From the Spending Culprits (Part 2)
In the first post in this series, I provided a few background observations from a recent Advertising Age article analyzing the marketing spend area and those that are getting involved in managing this category for the business. In this post, I’ll con…