Who is More Useful to Your Business? A CMO or a CRO?

I think I can safely say that you don’t go into business to lose money… unless you intentionally do so for a tax write-off. Yet making money is not as easy as it’s often characterized. It takes a great idea mixed with execution. It takes hard work mixed with luck. And, it takes money mixed…

Could You Improve a Customer’s Journey with Artificial Intelligence Marketing?

Last week, I made a mistake. I grabbed a soda out of a cooler, and it was a Diet Pepsi. I’m living in Pepsi Country. Pepsi was founded in nearby New Bern, North Carolina. But I gave up diet drinks a while ago because I don’t like the taste of artificial sweeteners. Artificial is generally…

Is Your Marketing an Investment or an Expense? Good Questions!

It’s been an interesting week. We are in the dog days of summer. People are vacationing, getting their kids back to school, or just soaking up (or avoiding) the sunny days and warm weather. Speaking of dogs. Our dog Layla picked up a case of the dog flu from doggie daycare. The daycare was incredibly…

FOMO to ROI in 5 Easy Questions

I started my podcast back on November 1st, 2014. I am about to cross the 1000-episode barrier. Next year will be 10 years. Although some of those episodes are “Best Of” repeats, I have done a monocast (solo episode) and expert interviews for over 450 weeks. Over that time, the business climate and the podcast…

Dropping Knowledge Bombs And Hitting Targets

I have mentioned before, I am a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and his podcast, Revisionist History. His last book The Bomber Mafia was about the race to use strategic bombing to end World War II. This was before the Manhattan Project which yielded the first atomic bomb that was built and used to change the…

I Lost It All… And Why I’m Happy About It!

Have you ever watched the movie “A Christmas Story”? There is a scene where Ralphie is helping his dad change a tire for the first time. He was holding the lug nuts in the hubcap, and his dad’s hand hits the hubcap, sending the hardware flying through the air, glistening in the lights of the…

Tag… You’re In! Segmenting Secrets

I have been listening to an audiobook by music producer Rick Rueben called The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Rick is a little eclectic but highly prolific. He discusses how inspiration is found, cultivated, and acted upon to create art. Art is not just music to him. It is anything that we as humans make.…

The Dollars Are In The Data

What Gets Measured… Gets Done? There is a famous saying, “What gets measured gets managed”, or “What gets measured, gets done”. It’s often attributed to Peter Drucker (but his organizations said it was not him initially). Other sources say it was coined by William Thomson, the Scottish physicist also known as Lord Kelvin. That dude…

How Can a Golf Swing Help You Build a Marketing SYS-TEM?

How often do you find yourself getting ads for something that you just searched for? It can be both creepy and annoying. Since the weather is so much better here in North Carolina than in Chicago, I have been lucky enough to play 20+ rounds of golf since January 1st. The golf here, especially in…

What’s Your Marketing Mousetrap? – Part 3

In the final parts of the series, I wanted to show how and why following traditional marketing thinking can hamper your success in B2b marketing. B2b marketing differs from consumer marketing because it’s more relational than transactional, and it often takes longer to go from awareness to trust. That means that there are more steps,…