In part one of this three-part series on digital marketing, we reviewed four key trends reported in the CMO Council’s
The State of Marketing 2012 Report: Given that the digital marketing makeover is a ‘key transformational mandate’ for marketers in 2013, below we offer a roadmap and ideas for undertaking your own digital marketing makeover this year.

Tags: digital marketing, Marketing Integration, marketing campaign, MRM, marketing technology, marketing resource management

Marketers have many new technologies at their disposal that increase efficiency, agility and productivity, including marketing resource management
systems, but building the business case for investing in these resources can be difficult. When evaluating any new tool, marketers and business leaders need to look at ROI, but they should also consider the cost of inaction (COI), as reported recently by B2C. Measuring the cost of inaction involves quantifying the opportunity costs of continuing in the status quo, as well as engaging with internal stakeholders to gather the information you will need to create urgency for the proposed change. Here are three steps for making the case for change – and succeeding.

Tags: marketing ROI, MRM, marketing strategy, marketing technology, marketing resource management

Today’s marketing environment can be frenetic to say the least, and effective marketing management is all about strategy. Your budget and resource constraints limit the number of activities your team can reasonably support in any given week or month, and making time to accomplish the most important activities demands expert prioritization. Here are four steps for boosting marketing productivity.

Tags: MRM, marketing strategy, marketing productivity, marketing resource management, local marketing automation

In Part 1 of our series on Building Brand Trust, we discussed strategies for building trust through social media and customer communities. While companies should always strive for a proactive approach to building brand trust, however, there are times when trust has been broken and needs to be restored. Here we discuss strategies for repairing broken trust – even when it may seem like an impossible task.

Tags: branding, MRM, marketing strategy, marketing resource management, financial services marketing

During Cincinnati’s recent BrandHUB launch, we had the opportunity to hear Guy Kawasaki speak. His second pillar of enchantment, trustworthiness, struck a chord of relevance with us, especially to building brand trust. Whether you’re an individual or a business, trust is integral to success. To build trust, you first need to extend trust; then, follow it up by modeling trust through authentic and transparent customer communications. Here are three guidelines:

Tags: branding, MRM, marketing strategy, marketing technology, marketing resource management

As marketers embrace growing volumes of customer data, variable data printing (VDP) is a way to make that data come to life and to help prospects and customers make an emotional connection with your brand. While it may sound complex, campaign personalization via VDP is within reach and can be executed at varying levels of sophistication with your Big Data efforts. Whether you are just beginning to put structure around your customer data for the first time or are further down the path, variable data printing can be an effective approach to personalizing marketing campaigns. Here’s your quick guide to making big data connect – no matter the sophistication of your customer data.

Tags: big data, Variable Data Printing, VDP, marketing campaign, MRM, marketing technology, personalization, marketing resource management

A recent study sponsored by the Columbia Business School and the New York American Marketing Association reports that 70% of marketers surveyed* say that marketing efforts are under greater scrutiny than ever before, and many marketers still don’t have a consistent understanding of what marketing ROI is: When asked to define what “marketing ROI” meant for their own organization, 37% of respondents did not mention financial effects.

Tags: marketing ROI, MRM, marketing resource management, marketing resource management ROI, MRM investment, MRM ROI

Changes in the consumer buying cycle have completely transformed Marketing’s approach, and the biggest harbinger of this change is that consumers might move on before you ever knew they were customers. Competing successfully in this new environment requires three foundational building blocks:

Tags: MRM, Continuity Campaigns, personalization, marketing resource management, sales and marketing alignment

As consumers have embraced social media in the Digital Age, they are conducting more research online than ever before.The digital environment is rapidly evolving, and navigating it requires the insight and collaboration of multiple departments.

Tags: branding, MRM, marketing strategy, marketing resource management

According to iMedia Connection, it is estimated that manufacturers invest $50 to $520 billion dollars in co-op marketing programs annually. In comparison to the estimated total U.S. advertising spend this year of $153 billion, reports iMedia, that translates to a lot of money available for co-op programs, but much of this funding is “left on the table.” According to the article:

Tags: co-op marketing, manufacturing marketing, marketing process optimization, insurance, Distributed Sales Model, MRM, marketing technology, marketing resource management, financial services marketing