Marketing in Real Life

There are lots of great articles about how to be a "modern" marketer and even more about how to hire one.  The challenge is that everyone looking for a great job thinks they fit the bill and are eager to spout off catch phrases like Inbound Marketing, Demand Generation, and Content Marketing to impress the uninitiated. While lots of executives at companies of all sizes understand that the marketing landscape is changing, many of them don’t know exactly what they need or what they are looking for. So, how do you know if you or your interviewee fit the bill?     1.      The modern marketer looks at the whole funnel, not just the top of it.   They know the numbers and see acquisition, conversion and retention as their job (note the eMarketer data showing a focus on lead generation).  They think about lead quality not jut lead volume.  And they see working cross-functionally as a blessing, not a hassle. 2. ...

The kind that makes me feel smart.    We all love to be proven correct, right?    It feels good to have an opinion that is supported – even after the fact – by quantitative data.    If you use this type of information effectively, over time more and more of your hypotheses will be proven out unless something fundamentally changes in the marketplace or with what you are selling.   The kind that makes me smarter.   Believe it or not, I love being proven wrong almost as much as I love being proven right.  As a marketer – or person – it’s important to always remember that each of us is just a sample of one.  Our upbringing, our experiences, our mood all dictate they way we consumer information and react to messages.  The value of good quantitative data is that it rules out those personal biases and shows us what most people do, and where to focus our efforts for the biggest impact. Whether you are a researcher, an analyst, a market...