Simply smarter marketing blog.

To some, this may seem like an obvious question, but there seems to be a lot of confusion about these important marketing planning concepts.  See the illustration below for a reenactment of a...

Developing a strong marketing budget that is aligned with your business goals is one of the most critical initiatives for any marketer. You need to approach your marketing budget like an investor....

My assistant walked into my office earlier today with a FedEx delivery that had the heft of a bottle of wine.  Based on the telltale weight – and the fact that is Friday afternoon – she knew she...

"How many leads do you need to hit your sales goals?"

That is one of the most common questions that I hear from marketers focused on demand generation.  I have heard it so many times that I...

The last time that I was working on a real podcast program was back in about 2005, right after my company acquired a company called Nuance – and subsequently took on their name (which was much...

If you spend more than $60,000 on a BMW, you probably have some reasonably high expectations for your customer experience with this premium brand.  A friend sent me this email that he received...

Check out my inaugural episode of the nerdCMO Marketing Minute.

I love data.  I also love free stuff.  That’s why this is one of my favorite tools.  By using Facebook Audience Insights with Custom Audiences, you can learn an incredible amount about your...

I first had the opportunity to work with website personalization technology back in the late 1990s when personalization was still a novel concept. After nearly 20 years, it still surprises me how...

Ashley, Ashley, Ashley…what are we going to do with you?

First of all, I’m sure that some of the readers of this post have been victim to my extremely aggressive emails about Dragon speech recognition software.  I’m going to ignore the famous advice:...

Great marketing plans are built on a foundation of goals that represent your most pressing business needs. But how do you define the right goals? It turns out that there are many common objectives...