The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Marketing Analytics

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The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Marketing Analytics shows marketing professionals how to talk the talk of C-level executives in terms of forecasting and reporting, and walk the walk to the revenue table by leveraging metrics that matter. With compelling graphics and real examples of Marketo’s own metrics and tactics, this guide offers best practices for harnessing data to not only prove, but improve ROI.

PR Rising

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Public relations has always played a critical role at enterprises and organizations of all sizes. But for a number of reasons, PR’s role, responsibilities and strategic importance are rising to new heights. Certainly, social media is a significant driver of PR’s ascendance, as are  digital and direct-to-consumer communications. But chief among them is the heightened importance of
content – specifically, its creation and dissemination through today’s maze of media channels, which public relations professionals have embraced as perhaps the most important part of their jobs.

Of course, public relations professionals have always produced a range of content, whether the stalwart press releases or bylined articles or speeches. Similarly, they have always been responsible for monitoring the media and navigating organizations through within and around it. So now that content plays a more important role in the communications mix than ever before – as social media has added a new, rich layer of complexity to the existing mediascape – who is better qualified to create and position that content than an organization’s communications personnel?

“PR people used to have essentially a technician’s role. They’d write speeches and put
out press releases and photos,” notes Brenda Wrigley, an associate professor and chair of
the department of public relations at Syracuse University. “Now there’s a management
function. A research function. A strategy function. It’s a different job.”

Marketing Is Content

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Be the content, Luke!

More than ever before – and even more so every day – marketing is content. And content
is marketing.

Simply stated, the interaction between marketers, who are increasing their investments in
high-quality content, and consumers, who are engaging with – and sometimes creating –
content around brands they are passionate about, is changing the nature both of content
and of marketing in ways that are profound.

Marketers are investing more aggressively in content in myriad forms, all in the interest
of driving engagement with new customers, enhancing brand loyalty and share of wallet
among existing customers, and creating both buzz and substantive value exchange across
social, online, search, mobile, viral and traditional channels.

IR Rising

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IR is rising in strategic importance to corporations and its purview is expanding. Both are the result of shareholders’ need for broader and deeper understanding of a company’s “story” – i.e., the dynamics of its market, and the company’s vision for creating value as those dynamics play out in an uncertain future.

IR is rising in strategic importance to corporations and its purview is expanding. Both are the result of shareholders’ need for broader and deeper understanding of a company’s “story” – i.e., the dynamics of its market, and the company’s vision for creating value as those dynamics play out in an uncertain future.

If there is one thing that the economic crisis has made abundantly clear, it’s the need for transparency and direct communications between issuers and shareholders. As one analyst put it, “It’s a new paradigm.

Acheiving High Performance In A Multi-Polar World

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There’s no denying it: Times are tough. Gone is the atmosphere of carefree consumer spending that businesses have enjoyed for the past decade or so. Instead, recession-shy buyers are now tightening their belts, zipping their wallets, and putting off…putting off…putting off that big purchase or commitment they were hoping to make. In this difficult economic environment, some of the world’s best-established companies and brands have found themselves struggling to stay afloat.

Incredibly, though, others seem to be doing better than ever. How is this possible? According to William D. Green, chairman and CEO of Accenture, today’s most successful companies are the ones that have kept a laser focus on performance. “High performance is still about market focus and positioning, your distinctive capabilities, and your people—what we call ‘performance anatomy,’” he says. “There’s lots of panic right now, lots of concern and fear. That’s natural. But at the end of the day, the game doesn’t change.”

Rewriting the Rules of IT for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

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From the PC to the Internet to everypiece of hardware and software inbetween, technology innovation hasbeen a key factor in helping small andmedium-sized businesses in their strug-gle to provide better customer service,improve efficiencies, respond to com-petitive threats, efficiently grow theirbusiness, and increase the bottom line.But unlike the largest corporations,these businesses don’t have an arsenalof IT resources to help them solve theirchallenges. Small and medium-sizedbusinesses are required to assemble,integrate, manage and troubleshootincredibly complex IT environments—much of which were conceived before the Internet era. These companies needintegrated solutions that are simple,powerful, secure, and flexible.

How to Use Twitter for Business - A Beginner's Guide

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The majority of today’s “traditional” marketers use outbound marketing to reach their audiences. For message distribution, they use print media, radio and TV. For lead generation, they use direct mail, cold calls and email blasts. These methods may have worked in the past; however, by using tools like TIVO/DVR, email spam‐blockers and caller ID, consumers block messages they don’t want. People now control how they consume media and what messages they care to hear.

But all is not lost! Consumers still want to learn about the best products and services for their needs.The key is they want to find this information on their own, most often by using the Internet. For example, someone might peruse the blogosphere to read first‐hand experiences with a particular product. Maybe that person will also search for reviews online or engage with others in social media to learn other views and opinions.

Instead of continuing to push marketing messages out, effective marketers adapt to this consumer behavior by creating marketing campaigns that pull people into their business. This strategy is called inbound marketing. Inbound marketers offer the public useful information, tools and resources to attract people to their site, while also interacting and developing relationships with consumers on the web. Inbound marketing tools include blogging, content publishing, search engine optimization, social media and social networks.

Twitter is one of the most powerful social networks for your business.

Measuring the Customer Experience is Key to Retail Success

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Customer Experience Measurement (CEM). Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Customer Intelligence. Customer Insights. Customer Satisfaction. Customer Loyalty. In a sea of terms and acronyms used to define the global movement on customer-centricity, it‘s almost impossible to sift through all of the research, reports, publications and articles that discuss this topic.

This white paper focuses on delivering insight and actionable recommendations related to one common thread that can be found throughout all of the information that‘s out there – Customer Feedback is Key to Improving the Retail Customer Experience.

To assist you with navigating through relevant industry research, (regardless of whether you already have a customer feedback program in place, or are considering optimizing your existing program), this white paper provides insight into what customers consider is most important in the customer experience, and what key performance criteria distinguishes best-in-class companies from the rest. We‘ll highlight some of the different customer feedback methods and share four steps for building an effective program that delivers measurable results.

Outlook: A whitepaper from the 2008 WWD CEO Summit - How To Win In Today's Environment

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Faced with an unprecedented decline in customer demand, retailers today need to view their cost,inventory and capital expenditure infrastructures, as well as the performance of their store portfolios,very differently than ever before, in order to manage through this economic environment. With the well publicized procession of retail bankruptcies and subsequent liquidations grabbing headlines—Goody’s, Mervyn’s, KB Toys, Steve & Barry’s, Gottschalks, Whitehall Jewelers, Linens N Things and Circuit City, to name a few—many are questioning who’s next. In the next few years, there will be winners and, unfortunately, many more losers. The survivors will be those who judiciously manage their operations and costs, and present a compelling product or offering that resonates with today’s consumers. 

The good news is that for those retailers who do survive, there will be significantly less competition. Approximately $20 billion of annual retail sales are accounted for by retailers either already out of business or expected to fold. In addition, a few billion of annual retail sales are accounted for by chains that have announced store closures, such as Boscov’s, Macy’s, Charming Shoppes, Ann Taylor and PacSun, among others.