For nearly the past 15 years, my career has been focused on helping marketers leverage data to better understand and more effectively market to customers on an individual level. In my early days in the industry, I worked primarily with marketing groups leveraging offline channels like catalogs and other forms of direct mail. In recent [...]

If you read this blog regularly, you know I'm a big fan of advergaming (or branded gaming, if you prefer.) The right game for the right audience can create enormous attention.

If you read that last sentence and thought, "Yeah--the 'right audience'--but my brand isn't for teen boys," then you haven't see the latest gaming demographics or followed what's new in gaming consoles. Games are skewing older, more female, and more social than ever.

A ne.....

In two days, two marketers responsible for spending a cumulative $9 billion last year lost their jobs, though nobody is talking about where all the money went. First, Procter & Gamble's Jim Stengel quit, followed by AT&T's Wendy Clark. Both...

Karl Goldfield contacted me the other day.  illumio flagged one of his posts, so I read it.  In this post, Karl goes on a rant about technology and sales training.  Here is my favorite part of his (unedited) challenge to sales trainers: If you are not tweeting your blog posts and sending newsletters to keep your mind trust strong in [...]

You might recall a few weeks ago seeing me live blog some conferences I attended using CoverItLive which is a great tool.

Whilst it’s pretty challenging typing and listening to the speakers at the same time, I have found that the notes I have been able to keep have been a great resource to others in my social network or reader of my blog who were not able to attend the conference and for my own research and archives.

Proving this valuable inf...

  Continuing the debate regarding sales team development, we have to be aware that there are alternatives to formalised classroom training: For example at JFC, we strongly recommend and indeed provide,formal and informal mentoring. We also coach managers to become coaches themselves.  Mentoring: In mentoring, salespeople choose a mentor (usually a high-performer or more experienced person within the [...]

Yesterday on this blog, we began an exploration of how to measure engagement and ascertain marketing ROI. The limitations of Exposure and Action Tallies were reviewed, and we ended with a brief summary of Transaction Metrics, which work well for direct response programs but aren't an option for marketing efforts that lack an immediate purchase or other call to action. For these sorts of marketing programs, different engagement measurements must...

Networking.  For many, if not most, salespeople and managers that word evokes images of the Chamber of Commerce networking nights, the breakfast lead exchange groups, and pestering mom, dad, the black sheep uncle, and anyone else that might be able to cough up lead. That word may also conjure up memories-maybe really recent memories from like, [...]