What Top CMO’s Care About (Demand Gen Persona) – Part 1 of 4
Top Trends for 2018 Highlight Greater Orchestration In March 2016, Constellation introduced four personas of the modern CMO (see Figure 1). This framework provided CMO’s with a model to think about the role of strategy versus execution and audience development versus audience acquisition. Over the past eight weeks, conversations with demand generation focused […]
50,000,000+ Views Later: What I’ve Learned About Content Marketing
When I meet with founders and investors, they assume at SaaStr we are some sort of content and social marketing geniuses. Let’s be clear — nothing could be further from the truth. We have no one on our tiny team with a background in content or social media. Everything is a hack. And we have […]
How Do You Beat a VC’s Best Companies?
I read a great article by Tomasz Tunguz recently called, “The Best Content Marketers In The World.” Content Marketing is literally the engine that powers my bootstrapped business: CNCCookbook. It provides me with a very nice living (income on par with public company executives not counting their stock sales) and has grown quickly and consistently […]
Content Marketing Isn’t Marketing Content
Here’s a summary of a short talk on Content Marketing I gave at Demandfest, a practitioner-to-practitioner event for marketers. In today’s SaaS market, one thing stands out, nothing. There is too much noise. Standing out and engaging customers is harder than ever. And there are too many spammy approaches that hurt the brand and drain […]
5 Content Marketing Tactics to Create Killer Content
You don’t have to be a large enterprise to have highly effective content marketing. The key to creating killer content is to focus on Quality Headcount, Strategy & Technology. Here are five content marketing fundamentals to create killer content: 1. Hire a Content Marketing Lead with Vision This person manages the content development process. But they need to […]
Quips: Networked Economy Models Emerge Should Verizon Gain Approval To Acquire AOL
The Content, Network, And, Arms Dealer Come Together With Merger The planned acquisition of AOL by Verizon for $4.4B is more than just the acquisition of the programmatic ad platform. Verizon is making the big shift to disrupting digital businesses for a few reasons: Shift from selling products and services to delivering brand promises. In […]
Why Pay for Mediocre Marketing Advice When Good Advice is Free?
Okay, it’s time for somebody to call BS on a practice I’ve seen for a long time. This will probably get me some negative press, but it needs doing. The practice I’m tired of goes something like this: – Entrepreneur starts up a bootstrapped business. Enjoys modest success and quits Day Job. – Suddenly, they […]
From CIO to CMO, A Data Story
If you came into marketing because you didn’t like numbers, then you don’t have much of a future. Beth Comstock, CMO at GE Much has been written about the shift in spending from the CIO to the CMO, Gartner has been out front on this by forecasting that by 2017 the office of CMO will […]
Is Silicon Valley Worth the Cost for Tech Startups and Bootstrappers?
There’s always some article or other in the blogosphere rambling on about why XYZ will be the next Silicon Valley–they’re quite popular. I just read an interesting piece that has some clues about the true costs of living here (yes, I live at least near SV and have worked most of my career in SV). […]
Why Customers And Prospects Expect Clearer Rules About Content Marketing
Original Mission Improves Engagement Through Relevancy Content marketing re-emerges as a hot topic and trend in improving engagement with existing customers and prospects. Marketers can improve the likelihood of engagement through the creation and sharing of relevant information. Typical delivery formats include advertorials, emails, branded websites, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and field marketing events. Content […]
