Our Blog
Read the latest from our thought leaders
Welcome to CAB season – It’s time to start planning for your next Customer Advisory Board meeting
Sunshine is breaking through the recessionary clouds of the past few years. Signs of cautious optimism are sprouting everywhere, giving hope that 2012 will be a pivotal year that will show continued improvement in the global economy. Many companies report a...
Are You Marketing to the Customers’ Buying Cycle?
Rather than just pushing information out to a big list of prospective customers, marketers need to have searchable, findable content available online, so that when prospects are ready, they can find you. This means developing a variety of types of content, suited to the different buying-cycle stages where potential customers are at any given time.
Personas, positioning statements, and messaging
Looking for more insights in building personas, positioning statements, and messaging? With the publication of The Marketing High Ground, I was interviewed by the editors of DemandGen Report. Our discussion covered a variety of topics. I've captured excerpts of the...
Benioff Ushers in the “Social Enterprise” at Dreamforce 2011
There were several key announcements by Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, at this year's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Over 45,000 people attended the event while 35,000 streamed it live. It was the first time I had to wait in line to cross Howard at...
How Are You Engaging with Customers?
Last post described the demographics and content usage of respondents to our recent survey. This time, we look at results on the questions in that survey about their current marketing and sales practices and initiatives. Here is how they responded to questions about how they are engaging with customers.
What Our Subscribers Have to Say
So much has changed in marketing and sales in the 9 years since we founded KickStart Alliance. Because we wanted to learn how our readers are operating in 2011, in April we sent a survey to our newsletter subscribers rather than publishing our usual monthly newsletter.
Vendors Role Evolving Into Content Publishers
By guest blogger, John Love. I attended a webinar a couple weeks ago on content marketing entitled “Stay Relevant: Map Your Interactive White Papers to the Buyers Journey” featuring Tom Pisello, Chairman & Founder, Alinean Inc. The presentation started with a...
Charlene Li on the Social Media Evolution and Revolution
Charlene Li, CEO & Founder, Altimeter Group, coauthor of Groundswell and author of the newly-released book Open Leadership, spoke at the Northern CA DMA club last week. Here are some highlights from her presentation entitled "Social Media Revolution and Evolution"...
Preview “The Marketing High Ground”
Download an excerpt -- The Marketing High Ground If you are interested in the best practices surrounding persona development, drafting crisp positioning statements, and crafting messages that are relevant and meaningful to your persona, you'll want to read The...
Outcome Selling Takes Customer Centric Selling to the Next Level
Are you doing the right things? Are you doing things right? Selling methodology and selling systems need to adapt quickly to accommodate changing business strategy. Product management priority should focus on portfolio responsiveness, where the portfolio is your...