Trained in storytelling and analysis of human communication, I see in managerial circles a great desire for too-pat formulas to predict human behavior. A lot of business people’s assumptions don’t pass a simple BS test — do I actually know anyone who’s done what we think our buyer is going to do in response [...]

CMOs, how do we make a difference when the available pool of paying customers has shrunk?
In a B2B company of not-unlimited means, it is easy to spend a lot of money on marketing without seeing value for the spend. Here are 4 spends that are limited, scalable, and accountable. Each can drive [...]

The real beauty of Kevin’s article When will CMO heads roll? isn’t the observation that corporate marketing budgets are broken and that change is amazingly slow in coming.
That’s an easy target.
What I like is his description of who is changing.
He describes an actual target market that a marketer can begin to get [...]

Three things we now expect every January on the internet:
– New year predictions.
– New year resolutions.
– Reviews of past years’ abandoned resolutions and failed predictions.
Why?
Humans crave the power to know and control the future. We also are creatures of habit & don’t change gracefully — not even to adapt [...]

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 [...]

Old data + moderately sticky product + customers in a mature industry = X
Components of X:
- Don’t anger a whole bunch of today’s customers.
- Where am I going to get better data?
- How am I going to make new friends?
- Can my product (or customer relationships) get any stickier? (incremental strategy – do what we’re [...]

In the real world, there’s always tension between the do-it-right-the-first-time mentality and the figure-it-out-as-we-go mentality. It’s fun to watch this unfold. Couples ordering dinner. Teams developing a project plan. Boards hashing out priorities.
Any time we’re doing something for the first time, we learn as we go. In industries and companies undergoing fast change that’s a [...]