Where are marketing leaders treading water, and which resources are propelling marketing innovation? Our 5th annual CMO Innovation Trends study collected anonymous feedback from 90 senior marketers to answer these questions and provide expert guidance to conquer innovation resistance.

How many other companies are using lame content marketing (or influencer marketing) strategy to promote their business, report, or book? 

Building strong communities and commitment to your innovative marketing solutions and ideas may be the smartest thing you do in 2018. I recently read a great book that described just how you can make that happen.

Today, we witness greater forces of nature than I have ever witnessed firsthand: Hurricane Harvey in Houston, and his not-so-distant cousin, Irma, who is terrorizing Cuba, the Caribbean, and a wide swath of Florida. Both are testing our fortitude as a global community, and causing significant losses.

There’s no debate that customer data plays an important role in marketing decisions. But are we collecting the right data? Is the massive amount of marketing data we’re collecting actually helping us understand our customers?

During AdWeek DC, I discussed the topic of big data with Jamie Gorski, CMO of Bozzuto. Here’s a sampling of what we covered in this enlightening “fireside chat”:…

How data gathering can become a mindless marketing activity
Real-life examples of how to use data effectively to build customer relationships
What “warm data”

In our digital world, Marketing and IT need to work more closely than ever in order to drive growth and improve the customer experience. However, it can be difficult for these two teams to come together. Differences in communication, culture, and priorities too often cause friction.
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Celerity, a business and digital consulting firm, recently hosted a CMO-CIO Roundtable to discuss these issues….

If you have a few notches in your business belt, then you can recall the days when market leaders could formulate a strategy, stick with it for 5-10 years, and flourish. Today’s different, and the belt notches have lost their gravitas.
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Author Amanda Setili just released The Agility Advantage: How to Identify and Act on Opportunities in a Fast-Changing World to help you identify the aspects of your business and marketing where you need to think and act quickly.…

How would your company benefit if you added 150 passionate advocates to your informal sales team?
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This is the question I explore in my latest HuffingtonPost article. I discuss the benefits of branded customer communities, and the role of Marketing in designing, building and nurturing them.

Some key takeaways from the article:

How the benefits of branded customer communities go beyond a social media presence
How content produced by customer communities (testimonials and reviews) influences buying behavior
Why purchasing and brand control is no longer completely in your company’s hands
How launching a customer community can put you ahead of the competition, with examples from Salesforce and Apptio
Nine questions to help you get started

You can read the article here….