Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 14, 2018

In vogue the last few years is the idea that the buyer’s journey is the best way to view how buyer’s get to a decision. The notion of the “journey” came into the conscious stream of business around the time when the concept of “customer experience” was introduced in the late 1990’s. Redefining The Buyer’s Journey.

Marketing AI 174

Marketing AI Buyer Personas Top of Funnel Digital Marketing Funnels 174

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 8, 2020

One of the most fascinating figures in American business history was that of Lee Iacocca. At Ford, he was best known for his efforts in the creation of one of the most famous cars in auto history – the Mustang. Changing the way, they think about next year and about the B2B businesses that supply them. Ford and Chrysler.

Allocation 187

Allocation Buyer Personas B2B Lead Ranking 187

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 3, 2016

While there may have been redundancy in previous surveys , this particular survey is devoted to understanding the best practices associated with buyer persona development. This is certainly a validating result business leaders in marketing, sales, and service operations should take away from this survey. . Reflective Commentary.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Correlation Effectiveness Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 5, 2021

Some of the best books ever written often involve an engaging central character or several central characters. By researching and considering these four elements of buyer personas, brand storytelling can help you prevent copy filled with business jargon and buzzwords.

Buyer Personas 198

Buyer Personas Storytelling Branding Brand Identity 198

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 13, 2015

Including the accepted notion recently found in a study by the Forbes Knowledge Group, which found 67% or greater of business executives relied primarily on intuition and subjective elements when making decisions. Let us take a simple, yet commonly referenced business decision example to illustrate. The so-called second layer.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Lead Ranking B2B Sales Research 100

Tony Zambito

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

This is especially crucial as organizations continue to evolve in transforming their business model from product-centric to customer-centric models. Where views on which segments best represent ideal target customers can become muddied over a decade or more. Customer Segmentation.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles Segmentation Profiling 100

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

The digitization of the global economy is resulting in a tidal wave of new business and operating models throughout the world. Digital disruption can affect both consumer and business markets simultaneously. There are two perspectives businesses must address in this area. Community Preparedness by Iconathon.

Organization 100

Organization Enterprise Management Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 23, 2016

We have also seen organizations struggle with how best to adapt to new market dynamics related to customer behaviors and the role of content in reaching customers. Making it harder for businesses to assess markets and get a read on market environments. Far more so than in any time in the last 50 years. Reframing Market Strategy.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

JANUARY 24, 2016

Because these dynamics are unfolding at a rapid pace, it is getting harder for CMOs and their teams to resist the many cliché expressions that will suffice such as “grabbing the shiny object” or “jumping on the bandwagon”. The temptation being great to go “all in” on the latest hot topic or trend and hope for the best.

Planning 100

Planning Buyer Personas Paid Search Agency Marketing & Strategy 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 26, 2012

Small business Administration estimates that the SMB segment accounts for better than 98% of all businesses in the United States. The attempt here is to answer some tough questions that help to bring more focus to an SMB strategy: Who are our best customers in the SMB segments and why?

SMB 100

SMB Enterprise Management Buyer Personas Marketing Management 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 31, 2011

Changes in buyer behaviors continue to march on as new social technologies take root into the mainstream of B2B businesses. Uncertainty on how best to understand buyers today as well as engage buyers is on top of the list for … Continue reading →

B2B 100

B2B B2B Marketing Marketing & Strategy Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

NOVEMBER 1, 2015

The goal for a B2B CMO, in today’s digital economy, is to strengthen the common view of customers by which their organization can make informed decisions on how best to be relevant. This is truer in B2B sales-driven cultures than in any other business-type cultures. 10 Essentials Of Becoming Customer-Centric With Buyer Personas.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 26, 2015

An important aspect essential to this transformation is how people and businesses interact. Ethnographic research uses techniques, which allows businesses to have conversations with and observe people in their cultural, as well as, natural environments. And, to see how other businesses are adopting new digital technologies.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Paid Search Agency Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 17, 2016

Invariably in business, there seems to be a tendency to gravitate towards the knee-jerk response of technology fixing a problem. Basically, offering a profiling exercise at best. It involves the use of qualitative research best practices to get the “whole” view of your customer’s world. We have been down this road before.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Research Personalization Marketing Budget 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 11, 2010

  Here’s why: In a business and organization context, the ability to express motivations, needs, and wants are based on current knowledge and experiences and thus much easier to express. Understanding buyer’s goal orientation has become even more critical as the means and methods to achieve them expand and diversify. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Buy Wikipedia Customer Satisfaction 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 20, 2015

Like many trends in the business world, I see the potential for the lengthy list of questions with an intent to find confirming tactic data being coined as qualitative research. It is helpful in gauging the understanding of buyer persona best practices and experiences. This is certainly anathema to qualitative research.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Research Studies Demand Generation Agencies 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 31, 2017

The concept derives from the notion that your best customers are your existing customers. It is an example of how an old concept can be recycled and be claimed anew again. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, ABS, the acronym for Account-Based Sales, was all the rage then.

Account Based Marketing 211

Account Based Marketing ABM Digital Transformation Paid Search Agency 211

Tony Zambito

MARCH 18, 2012

So the net-net has been that we are just holding on as best we can to these larger accounts. With revenue growth opportunities shrinking among their large accounts, senior leaders in these organizations are turning a focused eye towards the highly sought after small and mid-size business segment. 500 listed companies across the globe.

SMB 100

SMB Enterprise Management SME Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

DECEMBER 19, 2010

  We all know buyer behavior has changed so much that the B2B business world has to find ways to adapt or be left in the dust.    Paul Greenberg put it best this year when he said buyers today do not want to be an object of a sale but a subject of an experience.    But what is going on then? 

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Trends Conversion Buyer Personas 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 25, 2011

  Qualitative as well as contextual inquiry based methods common to ethnography and anthropology are best suited to get at the unarticulated goal choices of buyers.   What we do know today is that it is not business as usual.    What we do know today is that it is not business as usual. 

Demand Generation 100

Demand Generation Internet Marketing Purchase Buy 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 26, 2010

  Organizations today also are attempting to understand the best mix to offer with many resorting to trial and error.      Without understanding the end goals of its buyers, organizations will be hard pressed to lay out the best paths for buyers to reach their end goals.  As with the Way of St.

Buyer's Journey 100

Buyer's Journey Buyer Personas Wikipedia Social Media 100

Tony Zambito

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

First, with a focus only on the single buyer model, businesses risk finding their organization being excluded from a buyer’s network and not seen as an integral part of the buyer’s ecosystem. They can best be characterized as only helpful today but not revealing. They can best be characterized as only helpful today but not revealing.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking B2B Marketing Buyer Personas B2B 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 1, 2011

  An even more profound and sobering fact is that 80% of business buyers today say that they found their vendors as opposed to vendors finding them.    Don’t worry, you are in good company as 85% of business phone calls go into voice mail and are never returned. What is happening? 

Planning 100

Planning Buyer Personas Buying Cycle Marketing Automation Services 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 16, 2010

  Gaining insight into how these choices are aligned with a buyer’s goal orientation becomes a marketing and selling imperative for high stakes business model shifts, strategies, and new initiatives.  .  Getting a glimpse into how buyers make choices though can make a difference in success or failure. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Demand Generation Agencies Social Media Correlation 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 18, 2011

   What we know for sure is that the dynamics and interactions between businesses and buyers are undergoing their most significant transformation in many years and decades.    The results of these new approaches and technologies are mixed as best to date. 

Peer-to-peer 100

Peer-to-peer Buyer Personas B2B Thought Leadership Lead Ranking 100

Tony Zambito

MAY 17, 2010

  Creating a national following that rivaled some of the best marketing and advertising prowess dreamed up by Madison Avenue.    Businesses continue to be in receipt of multiple waves of marketing messaging, email marketing, demand generation, pay per click, and many new forms of social networking oriented content. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas B2B Marketing B2B Content 100

Tony Zambito

OCTOBER 4, 2010

.  This quote from David Meerman Scott is relevant because with all the shiny new objects that have been introduced the past few years, we can forget it is still about relationships: "It’s fascinating how the fundamentals of business-to-business marketing are the same today as they were 50 years ago. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Marketing Automation Services Buying Cycle Lead Ranking 100

Tony Zambito

JULY 10, 2011

  In a recent article, The Influence of the Social Buyer on Business , I alluded to areas that are undergoing transformation as well as new relational aspects emerging.    These being areas related to new social buyer ecosystems, social business models, and new social buying cycles. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Top of Funnel Peer-to-peer Marketing Funnels 100

Tony Zambito

AUGUST 21, 2011

.  The read I get into the corporate announcement by HP’s CEO Leo Apotheker is one of a strategic move to focus on challenging IBM with head-to-head similar business models.    Before the Apple iPhone, Smartphones were essentially targeted towards the business buyer and the enterprise.    Marketing.

Distribution 100

Distribution Buy Marketing & Strategy Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 29, 2012

Depending on which reports you may read when it comes to lead nurturing, approximately 60% or more of B2B businesses do not have a formalized lead nurturing program. "Sales Checking For Leads" © All Rights Reserved Kenny Madden.

Lead Nurturing 100

Lead Nurturing Lead Ranking Leads Lead 100

Tony Zambito

JUNE 1, 2011

  Now we are seeing an increasing change at a rapid pace for the B2B business buyer which is not so easy to pinpoint as in the consumer world.    The increased social interactions propelling forward new ways of conducting business and redefining buyer and seller interaction like never before. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Peer-to-peer Wikipedia Interactive Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

JULY 18, 2011

  Primarily, like most definitions in business, the term was adopted as well as co-opted to put a new label on practices that have been around for a few decades in marketing and sales.    Traditional management and business models have been built on pushing outward through the organization to buyers and inducing them to buy. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Lead Ranking Ideal Customer Profiles Opt-out 100

Tony Zambito

JULY 17, 2016

Putting their organization, in the eyes of customers and buyers, as the one organization that can help them to best accomplish their goals. They can transform by mapping to the intentions and goals of their buyers. The need for transformation in marketing is a growing concern for many CEOs and CMOs.

Intent 100

Intent Buyer Personas CMO Work Management 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 29, 2010

A struggle for any CEO is to communicate the story of how the organization can and will best serve the goals of it’s’ buyers.  .  The 10th and final rule: Rule 10: Buyer Persona Development Serves as a Communications Platform to Tell the Story of Customers and Buyers.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Marketing Automation Services Wikipedia 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 27, 2011

Businesses today are still attempting to figure out the levels and various forms of social interactions afforded to us by continual advancements in social technology.    Some of the best non-fiction books ever written are acclaimed for their deep investigation as well as creative narratives that engage the reader. 

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Storytelling Touchpoints Interactive Marketing 100

Tony Zambito

APRIL 14, 2010

  Believe me; if executives of major corporations see buyer personas as a “tool” to profile buyers and not a best practice, then the buyer persona development process will not have much hope of expanding beyond that.    Next up: Rule 2.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Rules Ideal Customer Profiles Social Media 100

Tony Zambito

MARCH 22, 2010

.   In part due to insights that led them to focus on growth strategies for their commercial end of the business.   Realizing that consumers would retract in spending, FedEx began to look at their commercial business as well as beef up their sales efforts in the manufacturing and distribution sub segments. How To Play.

Buyer Personas 100

Buyer Personas Planning Segmentation Case Studies 100