It’s probably data quality — labor intensive, behind the scenes stuff.
Good data is like jet fuel. The plane is beautiful and lovingly engineered, and it’s the part that the users actually see. But that gorgeously branded vehicle isn’t going anywhere without some liquid nourishment under the hood.
Kudos to by Ben Bradley at Macon [...]

In a world of limited time, finite means, and pressure for results, what not to do?
When marketing is under-resourced, it tends to stop listening to the customer (if it ever did), because listening requires a cessation of action. What happens next? Recycling whatever you said and did in the last campaign. Talking to all [...]

This is the part where we admit that your customers can’t predict their own behavior.
What people tell you they like or think or want to do is different from what they’re actually going to do.
Especially if your business objective involves parting customers from their money for any reason.
The answer?
Test.
Create a situation where a couple of [...]

Now that we’ve admitted that we aren’t customers, we can progress to step 2: actually talking to a customer.
Ironically, the closest many marketing people come to the sales cycle is the 2-way glass in the focus group facility.
Which is nice. But you’ll learn the most, and fastest, about your customers (in the B2B complex sale) [...]

Step #1: Stop assuming that your perspective is an effective surrogate for the perspectives of real customers.
That’s right. The first step toward customer centricity is to admit you’re not a customer.
This is still true if you : (1) used to be a customer, (2) sell every day to customers, (3) take customer service/tech support calls [...]

Widget makers have it easy. Plaster photos on the website. We.Are.Selling.This.Thing.  It.Looks.Like.This.  (Do you want it painted in Autumn Glory, Technicolor Stainless, or Urban Soot?)
For those of us who sell things whose souls cannot be captured in a photograph, it’s not quite so literal.
Here are six reasons why your erstwhile customer can’t figure out what [...]

I like to base my calculation of conversions on % of my total list [target universe] who converted. Now, % of clickthrough is the usual denominator. But I think that sets the bar too low.  I want to keep the focus on relevance to the total known target universe.
Why?
In my world, there are no [...]

And now, a shout out to the marketers at Sprinkles. This is one for the swipe file.
B2B comrades, this strikes me as interesting. Maybe there’s an equivalent in our world.
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My husband is on every email list known to humanity. One of them sent him an email (reproduced at the end [...]