'Tweet This week, I’ve joined marketers from around the world in Athens Americana – Boston, Mass. for MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments Optimization Summit 2013. After a short (and rather scenic) water taxi ride from the airport, I’ve settled into one of the Value Proposition Development Course sessions being led by Austin McCraw, Senior Editorial Analyst, MECLABS, as he taught marketers how to craft and express value propositions. I want to take the theory that we have put in place so far, and bring it down to a ground floor level of application,” Austin said. and write down you answer. MORE >>

'I’m writing this post on my old DOS-based WordPerfect software, to get in the proper mood for discussing business-to-consumer marketing automation.* The late 1990’s were really the last time we saw major innovation in the B2C market, when vendors like Unica and Aprimo released their then-innovative systems to create lists for direct mail and, somewhat later, email campaigns. Since then, the number of independent B2C marketing automation vendors has actually dwindled** as major and not-so-major products were purchased by larger companies to bundle into integrated suites or just use internally. MORE >>

'The hardest mistakes to avoid are the ones that don’t look like mistakes at all. Last week we shared 5 B2B marketing mistakes that are hard to avoid , and asked for your contributions to complete the list. Below are six more mistakes, including your contributions, that are deceptively easy to make in B2B marketing. Assuming Your Audience is Just Like You. Mistake contributed by Dara Schulenberg and Traci Browne. They aren’t. Study your audience, talk to them, ask them questions, strive to understand them. Then test marketing that is created for your audience, not for you. Wrong. MORE >>

'In this episode of Marketing Made Simple TV, @MargaretMolloy , Chief Marketing Officer of Velocidi  sits down with host Jeff Ogden  and shares key take-aways from The CMO Club Innovation Summit in NYC. Learn what’s on the minds of leading CMOs today in this highly engaging show. Margaret Molloy today in this very informative show. Specifically, you’ll learn: 1) Why CMOs today need to “walk in the customers shoes.” ” 2) How to differentiate your company through the brand experience. 3) Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C)? Who cares anymore? MORE >>

'One of the things I took away from the recent SXSW conference is the frenzied search going on to find new ground for our marketing messages. The media landscape is a mess. TV, radio, and newspaper advertising are in a freefall. Online ad click-though rates are dropping. Nobody is quite sure how to master “native advertising” that cleverly embeds ad messages in content. All the old “pipelines” for our content are drying up. So one viable alternative is to borrow somebody else’s pipeline. No wonder this is the new media gold rush — influencer outreach. MORE >>