The Dunning-Kruger effect in psychology is a bias among people (men?) of low skill. They consistently over-estimate their abilities. Perhaps because of their low skill/knowledge in a field they don’t even realize just how poor theirs is. And their over-estimation gives them more confidence.

And many people are attracted to people with high confidence. Someone who says “I know what to do!” is generally more convincing and appealing than someone who says “It’s complex. I will have to think about that and get back to you.”

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Dove soap has received deserved accolades for its “Real Beauty” campaign, which has run for over a decade. Running counter to the supermodel look of so many ads, it shows that women of all sizes, colors and ages can be beautiful.

The campaign grew out of market research done for Dove by Edelman – 3,000 women in 10 countries – which reported that only 2 percent of women interviewed considered themselves beautiful.

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AtomFor decades physicists have searched for a unified field theory, because sub-atomic particles act so differently than the objects that we see in everyday life. It is a puzzlement.

We have a similar challenge in marketing because it can be so different for startups, SMBs and enterprises.

Of course they all start with understanding the customer, and the market, and creating offerings that they want. But once you get past product-market fit and enter the world of promotion and demand generation, it’s all different. Continue reading

Intention signWhen planning your marketing you can use three methods to target people: demographic, psychographic, and intent. And of these three, intent is the greatest.

With demographic profiling you’re reaching people who are most broadly potential customers. For a consumer company demographics could include age, gender, income, where they live, race, education and so on. (B2B demographic data can include the industry of the company, location, size, departments and titles of people, etc.) But people with similar demographics may actually have very different buying habits. The people in my neighborhood are similar to me demographically but some have very different tastes when it comes to food, cars, entertainment, vacations, fashion and so on.

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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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“It is no longer the big beating the small, but the fast beating the slow.”
Eric Pearson, CIO, Intl Hotel Group

Speed has never been more important in business, and no doubt it’ll just keep getting more important.

Fashion has always changed fast, and in tech industries many product lifespans are measured in months.

Customers no longer can afford to wait for perfect; they need good-enough now.

And that means that companies, and marketers, need to constantly launch and iterate.

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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