Starting a career in marketing can be exciting, with so many options to choose from. However, it is important to make a wise choice, as the marketing world is divided into two main segments: B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business).
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 9
A confident marketing leader takes ownership of their personal brand. Learn how to let others know what you've accomplished.
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 7
Creating a content strategy is a major aspect of every marketer's job. New content is put online all the time, so how do you stand out and make an impact?
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 6
If you don't communicate customer value, you'll lose the sale. Your message needs to tell your customer what they get and how that is a big deal for them. If customers don't believe in the value of your product, why would they buy it?
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 5
CEOs complain that marketers don't understand their overall business goals. Learn how to align marketing goals with your company's mission.
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 4
43% of companies do not have a defined ideal customer profile. This is a critical step to align sales and marketing...and make your content marketing and campaigns resonate.
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 3
Learn how to stay on top of changing customer demands and competitor shifts to gain a marketing edge.
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 2
When is the last time you did a marketing 'health check'? A consistent and comprehensive marketing health check (or audit) is a great way to figure out what's working and what's not.
The Confident Marketer Playbook: Step 1
Strengthen your mindset to be a relevant, confident and influential marketer. Marketing is more than just know-how. It's about how you show up.
If there's one thing companies should focus on during times of uncertainty, it's how to stay relevant to their customers. Companies that obsess over their customers are able to offer 'value' in the form of new and appropriate solutio...
One of the biggest complaints that I hear from b2b marketers is that they often feel like ‘order takers’. Whether your CEO is constantly coming up with new ideas to execute, or the sales team needs help to create personalized customer-facing content, it...
Empowering your team is challenging for CEOs of scaling businesses. However, strategic marketing is essential to success. Read why and learn how.
You enter the business world eager to prove yourself and build a dream marketing career. But it quickly becomes apparent that everyone, and I mean everyone has an opinion about marketing. After several months or years you lose confidence and en...
To meet your customer’s rising expectations – you have to have a deep understanding of your customer. Here are three ways to get to know your customers better.
There’s a lot of talk about what it takes to be a top marketer.
There’s a long list of hard skills like Content creation, data analytics, SEO, social media, etc.
Then there’s a list of so-called ‘soft’ skills like agility, collaboration and listening.
It is impossible to be at the top of your game without first understanding what you are up against.
In order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the market, you need to conduct a thorough analysis of your competition. Here's how.
If you ask a marketer if they are creating content, there’s a 99% chance that they’d say “yes”. If you’re a marketer yourself, you know how much content you’re pushing out every day. From newsletters, blog posts, articles, social media posts to videos, ...
If you’ve been in B2B marketing or sales for the last few years, you’ve definitely noticed some changes – longer and more complex sales cycles, more buyers involved in the decision-making process, and more buyers coming to your organization with a clear...
The talk about being “customer-focused” is everywhere in the business world. It’s a term we hear frequently and there’s hardly any successful company — regardless of industry, type, or size — that doesn’t describe itself as customer-focused. The questio...
When I say “research”, what comes to your mind? If you're like most B2B Marketers, you probably thought "ugh!"
In talking with my clients, I’ve noticed what seems to be a trend among B2B companies. Most aren't doing ‘real’ c...
Of all the emails I receive in my inbox every day, only 10% are either work-related or from family and friends. The remaining 90%? You guessed it: Cold emails from salespeople. Normally, I just delete such emails—most of those still unread when I relega...
I recently made a trip to Home Depot to buy a replacement light bulb for my bedside lamp.
On any given year, I spend 0% of my time thinking about light bulbs. I’ve never googled “the best light bulbs”, nor read any product reviews about light bulb...
For my sins, I consider myself to be a ‘pracademic’, a word I use to describe myself because I had a long and reasonably successful career in corporate life. For the past few years I’ve been a University Lecturer and in addition been involved in a coupl...
B2B marketing has evolved and continues to do so at such a rapid pace. Brands are getting extraordinary opportunities to interact with customers faster than ever and in ways they couldn’t have dreamed of even a few years ago. With new technologies and e...
As a lifelong marketer, I’m aware that value proposition development is widely se...
You may have heard that more and more companies are doing away with the “Chief Marketing Officer”. Instead, they are consolidating marketing, customer and commercial leadership strategy under a new leader—the Chief Growth Officer or Chief Revenue Office...
Imagine that you’ve built a terrific product and are all set to launch it in the market as the next big thing that will solve people’s problems. But which people? “We are targeting everyone” is a phrase that no strategic marketer ever wants to hear. And...
B2B marketers spend 20-30% of their budget on event marketing every year. According to a Gartner CMO report, it’s one of the top four spending areas — ahead of social media, customer intelligence, and email marketing.
This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but we have an epidemic on our hands.
My colleagues and I recently analyzed over 30 of the...
In today’s omnichannel world where potential buyers get lots of product and company information online, it is crucial that sales and marketing are aligned to customer needs. CEB research showed that B2B buyers tend to be over 60% of the way through the ...
I love reading over everyone’s predictions for the New Year. Especially as it relates to marketing.
But most of the predictions seem to be around marketing tactics – where you should allocate your budgets to reach more customers, how to create mor...
You’ve probably seen these stats by now — up to 90% of the content that marketing creates is never used by the sales team, and 42% of content marketing is not effective. As a B2B marketer, I‘m aware of the fact that the sales team doesn’...
As a B2B Marketing consultant, one of the questions I get asked most frequently is “how can I really know what my customers care about?”
And, my answer is always the same — please do your research.
If there’s one t...
For me, the word “homework” conjures up college memories of late nights, vending machine meals and stress. Maybe this is why most of us aren’t very eager to do our homework when we finally get to the “real world” of business. But, as much as I hated hom...
According to John Kotter, author of Buy-In, “70% of all organizational change efforts fail, and one reason for this is executives simply don’t get enough buy-in, from enough people, for their initiatives and ideas.” As a marketer in any size or...
It’s the time of the year when many of us tend to over-indulge. Whether it’s saying yes to one more party. One more cookie. One more glass of wine. We get tricked into thinking that more is always better.
There’s a similar deception happeni...
I’ve been obsessed with reality TV cooking competitions lately. One of the more entertaining shows is “Chopped”, which features talented chefs on the Food Network. Each episode, four chefs must compete against each other in the creation of three courses...
No matter the size of your organization, chances are the perception is that you and your marketing team can handle it all. From redesigning the website, to launching a new campaign, and from generating industry buzz to developing compelling customer con...
Over the past decade I’ve had the opportunity to work with Sales teams of all sizes. My formal degree and passion are in Marketing, but I learned early on that in order for any of my marketing programs to be successful, I needed to build relationships w...
Oftentimes it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. Take cooking, for example. One year I had the goal to learn how to cook at least one new dish per week. So I started by collecting a bunch of recipes online, and was quickly overwhelmed...
Is your organization creating buyer personas? If not, you’re skipping a fundamental step in your marketing approach. But, perhaps the only thing worse than that is failing to use buyer personas effectively despite having them. And that’s exactly what’s ...
Let’s begin with a scenario — how much time do you spend focusing on your internal core operation rather than truly identifying market or customer needs and determining how your organization can best serve those needs? I’ve worked at many organ...
If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar
Why targeting is importantI love this old saying by Zig Ziglar. Not just because it’s packed with truth and life-lessons but also because it brilliantly sums up a classic content marke...
Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.” – Zig Ziglar
If you’re in content marketing, these words of Zig Ziglar are something you might consider tattooing on your forehead. Why? Because generality ...
As we wrap up the first quarter, it’s a good time to review your marketing performance and set plans for what lies ahead. Did you manage to hit (better yet, crush) your goals or did you barely struggle to maintain performance? If you fall into the secon...
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
The quote comes courtesy of Chinese military general, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and is oft-quoted in the marketing world...
For every customer who bothers to complain, how many other customers remain silent?
How many unhappy customers don’t complain or simply leave, never to return?
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