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...

My company has a lot of internal dashboards.  We love metrics and keeping our eyes on them on a daily basis is what helps us be successful.  But lately some of the most important metrics we watch have started being sent around by our interns.  Don’t get me wrong, our interns are great. But is that really the best way to communicate?  Here are three reasons I think the answer to that question is no. 1) Loss of importance.   Again, I love interns but regardless of how great they may be I know that I am more likely to pay attention to something sent by a higher level employee.  Having a senior level person send the metrics also allows r some qualitative color to be added to the numbers. 2) What’s the feedback loop?   If I have a question about what I am looking at I’m not sure who to ask.  Do I ask the intern?  Their manager (if I know who that is)?  The fact that I’m not sure who to follow up with is a problem in itself....

There’s a classic sports phrase “offense wins games, defense wins championships." (There’s also the notion that fans hate that saying, but that’s for another day) In business, it plays the other way. Defense leads to complication, slow decisions, and reasons NOT to do something. Offense leads to creative ideas, aggressive tactics, and the difference between good and great. So if you want to win for your company or career, play offense and make stuff happen. Defense won’t get you far. Photo credit: The atlantic

Life can be hard. Work, parenting, traffic… They all bring our stress and anxiety to elevated levels that I personally don’t want to be at. Here are 5 things I try to do every day to level them out. 1. Agree with someone. It’s easy to be contrary all the tome but acknowledging other people’s good ideas goes much further. 2. Challenge something. Pushing yourself and others to be better helps create the world you want to live in and provides a strong sense of accomplishment. 3. Completely space out. Falling into a song or a tv show or a smell that takes me away from my desk or car or house changes my entire outlook. 4. Be present. Putting the phone down and truly engaging in a conversation with a living, breathing person makes you remember how great human interaction is. 5. Laugh. Funny and enjoyable things are happening all the time. Making room in my day for them always makes me feel better about the hard stuff.