I suspect that I am not the only one who is frustrated by the increasing amount of advertising clutter. Watching television has become increasingly painful as it seems to be little bits of content (entertainment) interspersed with dozens of commercials.  Talk radio is even worse, with 45-50 percent of the airtime devoted to the non-talk part (commercials, PSA’s, news, etc.). . To get away from radio commercials, we subscribe to Sirius/XM Radio. And like most households, the Ryan family has a DVR that we use to tape programs.  like to watch sporting events live, particularly football and golf.  MORE >>

A business colleague asked me what we looked for when recruiting new teammates at Fusion Marketing Partners.  Since we pretty much confine our services to B2B marketing, the question could have been, “What are the characteristics of a good B2B marketer?”  After taking a little time to think about this subject, here are my top five criteria: Understands pull marketing.  Most of our clients are doing some form of pull marketing. In other words, they want to use marketing techniques that attract the people who are already interested in what they are selling. Has experience with social media.  MORE >>

As a CEO or business owner, you have some tough decisions to make about your marketing and sales operations.  Traditionally, this has involved hiring one or more marketing personnel, and paying them a salary (sometimes with a bonus) as your in-house marketing department.  I worked in this model for two decades, earlier as a marketing manager and later as the marketing (and sometimes sales) department head. . In many ways the in-house model works well, but it does have its challenges. Outsourcing is much easier today for both the outsource provider and the client because of technology.  MORE >>

Clinically speaking, a manic depressive disorder is defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood. Some manic episodes include increased energy, activity, with rapid talking & thinking, followed by sustained periods of unusual, even bazaar behavior. That would describe some social media personalities. They don’t post to their blog or text to their friends or colleagues for weeks at a time. They don’t reply to messages sent to them nor do they participate in the community groups they joined with such enthusiasm. Suffered a grave illness? Not committed. Ongoing. MORE >>

I’ve seen a number of blog posts and articles lately that use sports metaphors.  I think this is true because sports is a common reference point for Americans.  People who have no idea who their U.S. senator is or which ocean is on the west coast can name the  Super Bowl MVP and they also know who won the World Series.  So I got to thinking (always dangerous) about the many ways that B2B marketing is like baseball and some of the lessons we marketers and sales people can learn from the Boys of October.  Here are four: Continuous learning is vital to success.  That’s 53 years.  MORE >>