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Posts from the ‘Marketing Strategy’ Category

7
Aug

Why CMO’s are becoming CIO’s: Extreme Complexity

Why_CMO_s_are_becoming_CIO_s

As one frustrated CMO exclaimed at the Forrester CIO-CMO Summit in 2013, “I feel more like a CIO than a CMO! I have marketing automation, CRM, listening platforms. I’m up to my eyeballs in technology.”

Just 3 years later, this overwhelming feeling is still very much alive. In virtually any market or type of business, the speed in which technology is advancing, is adding extreme complexity to the  world of CMO’s.

Those that do not react will become obsolete. Read more »

29
Jun

The Future of Marketing is Extreme Complexity

future_of_marketing_extreme_omplexity

Are you in denial?

Marketing leaders in B2B and B2C are confronted with high customer expectations and a trend towards advanced technology that customers use during the buying process.

This is is turning marketing into an extremely complex discipline, providing challenges that need to be faced today. When is this complex future of marketing going to happen? Faster than you think…way faster…

Read more »

30
May

How to Leverage Big Data in Your Marketing Strategy?

leverage_big_data_marketing_strategy

 

Integrating big data in your marketing strategy is important in todays business strategies. The question is if big data is mature enough today to be usable, practical and beneficial to marketers. Isn’t big data a lot of effort, for little added value to the business? Let’s see…

No doubt data in general, within the field of marketing, is becoming more important. I’m not even talking about big data here, just data. As big data was reaching fever pitch sometime between 2011 and 2014, today the cool kids in data are moving on to obsessing over AI and machine intelligence and deep learning.

The basic idea behind the phrase ‘big data’ is that everything we do is increasingly leaving a digital trace, which we can use and analyse.

Early adopters have experimented with big data, with mixed results. They had to work with big data startups, and cobble solutions together. Today, these early big data startups went through multiple VC financing rounds, scaled their organizations, learned from successes and failures in early deployments, and now offer more mature, battle-tested products.

Is big data really sounding “3 years ago”, or has big data matured and is it more usable for marketers today ?

That’s the question I want to answer in this blog post.

Read more »

17
Apr

The CMO’s Guide to Digital Marketing Organization Structures

CMO_guide_to_digital_marketing_organization_structures

Digital is everywhere. As a result, the pressure on leadership is increasing to redesign the marketing organization structure towards more customer centricity, customer experiences, data driven and personal marketing.

Marketing leadership is reacting by investing in new concepts such as content marketing, inbound marketing, marketing automation and (big) data marketing. But without the right organization, any of these new concepts is set for failure.

But today’s modern marketing organization is complex, and requires purposeful planning and a combination of talent, technology, and consumer insights in order to have a positive impact on the company’s bottom line.

In this blog post, I want to explore how you can structure your marketing organization, and answer the following questions:

  • what skill-sets and profiles do you need?
  • what organization structure do you need?
  • what new functions and teams do you need?
  • how will departments work together in new agile ways?
  • how do you structure for content marketing?
  • how do you organize for agile marketing operations?

Read more »

28
Jan

Best-Of-The-Best Marketing Ebooks of 2015

best marketing ebooks 2015Marketing is changing rapidly. Some say it has changed more in the last 5 years than it did in the last 500 years.

Responsibilities of CMO’s are also increasing due to the shift in buyer behavior and the fast changing world of marketing technology.

We may very well be entering a golden age of marketing, but this is not coming without some cost.

That cost is visible as a whole new learning curve for marketers, who are starting to have to be more and more technical. And on the other side you have technical people, who are having to learn more marketing.

Modern marketing leaders, or aspiring modern marketers must learn to master the discipline of lifelong-learning by continuously reading, studying and experimenting in an ever expanding field of marketing expertise.

Today, like I did in 2014, I want to provide you with a selection of the best marketing ebooks that have been created in 2015. These marketing ebooks are part of my way of lifelong learning, and I want to share some of the best that I found in 2015 with you.

(if you are not interested in the little personal story that follow, just scroll down to find the list of best marketing ebooks of 2015 !) Read more »

25
Dec

2015 and the Year of the Rise of the GAFTAA Mafia

the GAFTAA mafia

Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Alibaba.

Together they are the GAFTAA mafia. They battle for the internet, the consumer, and access to these consumer through marketers.

We marketers have little choice to pay ever more pizzo, or protection money.

This protection money serves to marketers as a means to be found or to get access to our consumer. Or do we have a choice instead of paying them money? Read more »

29
Nov

How to Create a Unique Content Marketing Culture?

unique culture of content - how-toA culture of content goes far beyond enabling and empowering content creators outside of marketing.

A culture of content is an organizational environment and attitude that embraces and evangelizes the importance of content marketing and internal knowledge-sharing across the entire enterprise.

A business that achieves an internal culture of content is one that inspires employees—not just those in marketing—to create content for both internal and external consumption. If brands want to succeed as publishers long-term, their commitment to storytelling has to start with their company’s culture.

The question is: how do you do that? In this blog post I want to take you through a number of steps that introduce a genuine culture of content. Read more »

30
Oct

What to do when everyone has Thought Leadership Content?

thought leadership content should be freeThe problem with thought leadership is that the term ‘Thought Leadership’ is overused, abused, and can harm your business. Let me explain…

In many cases people refer to it as ‘thought leadership content’, which in essence refers to the act of publishing material that tries to position you or your company as a thought leader.

I think that is a very limiting view, and incomplete as a thought leadership content strategy.

Lately I have been increasingly “fed-up” with the vast amount of ebooks and webinars thrown at me, with great sticky titles, and sometimes even great authors or speakers, but with low or mediocre quality in the end.

I think it is the fault of inbound marketing. No, let me rephrase that: It is the fault of everyone jumping on the inbound marketing band-wagon, and executing poorly. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with inbound marketing. It can work really well, but only if you understand- and execute it properly.

Read more »

30
Sep

5 Big Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Transformation

charles darwin_digital marketing transformationTransforming a marketing organization to embrace digital marketing requires change. Some companies seem to make this transition seamlessly, and other are struggling.

The dream of agile marketing operations, 1-1 marketing, digital customer experience, intelligent marketing technology and digital customer journeys seem to be impossible to reach.

What are some of the big fundamentals driving digital marketing transformation?

In this blog post I discuss 5 critical “must-do’s” to get organized for Digital Marketing Transformation.

 

But organizing for digital marketing transformation is not without its challenges…

Read more »

31
Aug

Organizing for the Digital Customer Journey

Organizations in B2B and B2C increasingly need to organize for the digital customer journey.

It’s no secret that the buying behavior of customers is increasingly influenced through digital content consumption and digital interactions using smartphone apps, tablets, social media and now als wearables.

Baby boomers, generation X and millennial spend more time consuming content, up to 20% hours a week, according to a new study “The Generational Content Gap”, in which Fractal and Buzzstream surveyed over 1200 people about digital content consumption.

Companies need to respond by understanding this digital behavior, and rethink the organization. Internally, and externally. From a marketing perspective this requires a different type of marketing.

I usually call it modern marketing these days, because it’s difficult to cover this subject in a couple buzzwords.

But it boils down to:

  • applying modern digital marketing tactics,
  • a culture of digital optimization,
  • building a digital marketing technology backbone, and finally…
  • a new type of organization with new digital roles in the marketing department.

That’s a lot of change. Where do you start?

What is the initial spark that sets this change in motion?

Read more »