#Marketing

Keeping Business Simple

Michael Kerman

Dec 18, 2019
3 min

The 12 Questions of 2020 Marketing (Part II)

Now that the company holiday party is over, here are the remaining 6 questions that every marketing leader should be prepared to answer… 7. Have you explored using purchase intent data to improve your prospecting efficiency and lead qualification process? It’s one thing to have a list of prospects to email or call, but where do you start? Is it largest-to-smallest? Perhaps “A” to “Z”? Perhaps you should be investigating using some type of purchase intent data to help your tar

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The 12 Questions of 2020 Marketing (Part I)

Michael Kerman

Dec 11, 2019
3 min

The 12 Questions of 2020 Marketing (Part I)

Well, 2019 is coming to end which means everyone is heads-down trying to close-out Q4 and get their 2020 plans and budgets in-place. So, I’d like to break with tradition; instead of the “12 Days of Christmas”, I’d like to offer up the “12 Questions of Marketing”. I believe these are questions that every marketing leader should be prepared to answer, regardless of whether the question comes from the Board, the CEO or even themselves. Remember, just knowing the answer isn't eno

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Michael Kerman

Dec 2, 2019
5 min

What Your Customers Told Me

Over the past 9 months, I've been fortunate to be involved with 4 separate projects that all revolved around helping companies better understand buyer insight, preferences and actions. These were all B2B companies that spanned a variety of industry sectors and I spoke with around 60 customers in total. Talking to customers is always eye-opening, but these experiences were different. There were five (5) consistent themes that surfaced: 1. They Like You... but Don't LOVE You.

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7 Steps for Lead Development Rep Success - Part II

Michael Kerman

Nov 2, 2019
3 min

7 Steps for Lead Development Rep Success - Part II

In Part I of this blog, we covered the groundwork that needs to be put in place to ensure the success of these functions. Now, we focus on enablement and empowerment. Step 4 – Integrate into Sales and Marketing One quick way to end up in an ugly abyss is to pull customer lists from your CRM system, give them to the team and have them start emailing and calling. PLEASE, do NOT do this! This team is a critical bridge between marketing and sales and needs to be tightly integrate

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7 Steps for Lead Development Rep Success - Part I

Michael Kerman

Oct 28, 2019
4 min

7 Steps for Lead Development Rep Success - Part I

How many times have you or your leadership team uttered one (or more) of the following phrases in some degree of desperation: “We have to reduce our cost of selling” “We can’t burden our field reps with leads that aren’t ready to buy” “We have some interested prospects, but who is going to actually call them and qualify them?” Don’t worry if your answers were “daily” or even more frequently. The reality is that B2B sales cycles have become more complex due to (1) more solutio

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5 Common Customer Journey Mapping Mistakes

Michael Kerman

Oct 3, 2019
4 min

5 Common Customer Journey Mapping Mistakes

Customer experience (CX) is all the rage these days as companies struggle to attract and retain increasingly sophisticated and fickle customers. This is true not only in the B2C world, but in the B2B space as well. As a result, many companies have embarked on some type of customer journey mapping initiative with the end-goal of developing deeper customer insight which can then be used to improve everything from product offerings to marketing campaigns and service delivery. As

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Michael Kerman

Aug 22, 2019
6 min

The Marketing Journey Paradox

In preparing for a recent client presentation and proposal, I re-read Deloitte’s January 2019 report, “Beyond Marketing”. I’ve found this report to be extremely accurate and insightful as it paints the ever-evolving picture of marketing’s evolution, obstacles and desired-state. “THE new world of marketing is personalized, contextualized, and dynamic. Increasingly, this world is orchestrated not by outside parties but by chief marketing officers partnering with their technolog

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Michael Kerman

Jul 11, 2019
3 min

The Value of Social Media Marketing

Whether it is during a consulting engagement, a job interview or even at a dinner party (yes, it did just come up at a dinner party!), everyone is perplexed by social media marketing. On the surface, everyone "gets it". You want your customers to be talking about your product, to each other, to you and to potential prospects. You want to leverage the shift from text-based content to images and videos due to their powerful story-telling ability. You want to leverage these new

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Michael Kerman

Jun 21, 2019
3 min

5 Good Ideas for CMOs

Most blogs and articles tell you how to avoid worrying about this and that. This blog is different. With the shortest tenure of any of the C-suite positions, Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) instinctively worry and the list of concerning issues is vast. Rapid changes in customers, technology, data privacy and more make it a very challenging time to be in marketing. However, here are 5 good ideas for CMOs to really focus on: 1. Customer Research. Everywhere you turn, the focus i

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Michael Kerman

Apr 17, 2019
3 min

Stopping Runaway Event Spend

I just finished an interesting project. A marketing VP asked me to help him examine and potentially “right-size” his event spending. He was spending approximately 45% of his program budget on events and didn’t have a lot to show for it. We spent a lot of time in spreadsheets, looking at different events, counting prospects and leads(?), tabulating total event costs and more. I also had him walk me through the event planning and decision-making process. After a few days of bac

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Michael Kerman

Apr 3, 2019
4 min

Up and To the Right, Please

There other night, I was attending a local business professional networking event (I'm a big believer in "networking for life"). You know the format.... drinks and meet/greet, followed by a speaker followed by a little more networking time. A friend came up to me with someone "in-tow" and greeted me by turning to his friend and saying, "Hey David, this is Michael Kerman. He's a 'marketing guy' and can help you". My friend headed off to the hotdogs-in-a blanket leaving me with

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Marketing and Innovation: An Under-Valued Partnership

Michael Kerman

Mar 17, 2019
3 min

Marketing and Innovation: An Under-Valued Partnership

I was delighted to read Denise Lee Yohn’s an article in HBR entitled “Why Great Innovation Needs Great Marketing”and finally see someone reinforce such an important linkage. However, I finished the article and felt uneasy - there was something incomplete or missing. It took me a while, but finally I realized that the article had two main shortcomings and having spent more than 20 years in high technology and marketing, I'd like to share my perspective. First, I couldn’t help

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Michael Kerman

Mar 6, 2019
2 min

Has Marketing Lost Its Focus?

Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about attribution. Some people think about their summer plans or the Oscars or Spring Training. I, on the other hand, have been thinking about attribution. The underlying questions are really quite simple, aren’t they? What is driving our pipeline and revenue? Every marketer wants to know this so we can stop doing things that aren’t working and double-down on what is working. The challenge, of course, is that at any givin

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The Perils of Managing a Marketing Budget

Michael Kerman

Mar 2, 2019
3 min

The Perils of Managing a Marketing Budget

During my recent travels, I met up with a CMO of a large company. We were commiserating about how non-marketing executives immediately dive down to the tactical level when inquiring about marketing spend and effectiveness. They usually say things like “how much do we spend on events?” or “we should be spending more on whitepaper” or “Are we spending enough on advertising”. We both agreed that marketing executives need to not only be more transparent about how we’re investing

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Michael Kerman

Feb 19, 2019
4 min

Ten Steps for Keeping Your Content King

Even after all of these years, I still hear the common lament which comes in two forms: “Marketing produces all of this content and nobody reads it” “Marketing produces all of this content but we don’t know if any of it is of value” One of the key pillars of any marketing plan, especially in the B2B world where purchase decision are increasingly complex and where buyers typically consumer 6-10 pieces of content before making a purchase decision, is the creation and distributi

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Digital Marketing: Fight the Right Fight

Michael Kerman

Feb 12, 2019
3 min

Digital Marketing: Fight the Right Fight

So, I've got a little time to catch up on my reading and one of my favorites is the McKinsey Quarterly. Their article on "Digital Strategy: The Four Fights You Have to Win" in their October 2018 issue really resonated with me and I'd like to share my perspective. In the article, the authors identify four distinct battles that need to be waged and won: Fighting Ignorance Fighting Fear Fighting Guesswork Fighting Diffusion While these refer to overall digital transformation and

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Michael Kerman

Feb 4, 2019
3 min

Marketing in a GDPR World

A few days ago, I received a call from a CEO who wanted to get some advice on marketing. He has a head of marketing, but he was particularly troubled by, surprise, the General Data Protection Regulation or "GDPR". We met for lunch and he shared with me his situation which can be translated into the following statement: "How can I have a European marketing plan with GDPR in place? What can I do where?" Now, the first thing I did was to mention that he should get legal counsel

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Michael Kerman

Jan 29, 2019
2 min

Oh, No... Customer Advisory Boards!

(Part 1 of 2) Customer. Advisory. Boards. I've spent a lot of time in both traditional marketing and product management roles and know of no other topic (maybe besides tradeshows!) that elicit so many "oohs" and "ahhs" as well as groans - your truly, included. Here is the secret reason why.... Most companies do a terrible job of constructing and executing customer advisory boards! Oh sure, the concept is simple. Let's pull together some of our top customers and bounce product

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Michael Kerman

Jan 25, 2019
2 min

The Big Event... or Not

If there is one aspect of marketing that is always hotly debated, it's that of trade shows and other similar events. I know of no other single topic that draws such polarized views from marketing and sales professionals. Some feel that events are a critical part of the marketing mix and go-to-market strategy. It's where the company goes head-to-head with its competitors to tell the most compelling story and get the most visitors. It's also where your company experts can speak

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