finger selecting martech illustration                                                                                                                              Marketing technology is central to the success of revenue generation programs today. Companies can use these software programs for such important tasks as email marketing, website conversion optimization, search advertising, and providing a consistent message across different channels. When properly used they can help generate significantly increased leads, opportunities and sales.

But Scott Brinker has identified over 5,000 companies offering marketing technology (martech) software in dozens of categories. This vast variety of options makes it difficult for people in many companies to decide which types of technologies to use; selecting the particular software programs is even more difficult. It is especially challenging for small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that don’t have the deep staff and technical expertise that enterprises have.

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I heart SMBsI know that the Bullseye Marketing Framework can produce tremendous benefits, but it’s not for everyone.

For example, are you a senior marketing executive at a…

  • Global 2000 company?
  • Venture backed startup?
  • Company with a robust, successful marketing program that’s exceeding its goals?

Then maybe you already have this revenue generation thing nailed. You look at the Bullseye Marketing Framework and think, “I’m good, thanks.” And that may well be the case.

On the other hand, maybe you’re a senior executive (in marketing or another area) in a small- or mid-sized company that is feeling a lot of competitive pressures.

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Bullseye Marketing Framework This should be a golden age of marketing.

More channels and tools exist to reach, persuade and gain customers than ever before. A new channel – social media, mobile, the Internet of Things, etc. — is added seemingly every year. Thousands of companies now offer some flavor of marketing technology in dozens of categories. Many studies have shown that companies that market more grow faster.

But the result of this upheaval for many marketers is a feeling of innovation overload. They are constantly bombarded with conflicting claims from vendors. They understandably don’t even know what all of those dozens of channels and types of martech do, let alone how to use them to produce optimal results.

The Bullseye Marketing FrameworkSM is my response to this challenge.

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Last Friday I wrote about the need for speed, and (unrelated) on the same day Tom Peters tweeted:

Tweets by Tom Peters
I would never say “speed is all”. Or that you should be hasty. I don’t think there should be a tradeoff between speed and excellence.

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Does marketing increase revenue? Or is it a cost center?

A recent study from ITC and Velocify says it definitely works.

The two companies surveyed more than 1,000 insurance agencies. Continue reading

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and it’s time for the wearin’ of the green! Or not.

In China “wearing a green hat” is an expression for a man being cheated on by his wife or girlfriend, because the Chinese word sounds similar to the word for cuckold. Continue reading

The evening after Donald Trump was elected president, Teresa Shook got some friends near her home on Maui to show her how to create an event on Facebook. Although usually not very political, she was so upset with Trump’s election that she decided that there should be a march on Washington after the inauguration to protest it. When she went to bed she already had about 40 people coming and 40 maybes. When she woke the next morning it had exploded to 10,000 coming and 10,000 maybes. Continue reading

A few years ago I attended one of those multi-city marketing tours that software companies do – this one was by Eloqua, a major marketing automation company. Held in a hotel downtown it was a full-day event with probably 150-200 people attending. Continue reading

When people see your messages multiple times in multiple places they are typically more effective. One cross-channel opportunity is to advertise to your prospect or customer list with Facebook’s Custom Audience feature.

Upload your customers’ email addresses or phone numbers into Facebook Custom Audiences and it will match them with its members (for privacy reasons it deletes immediately ones that it doesn’t already have). Continue reading