Useful but impractical, handy but unwieldy, and trusty but untrustworthy, spreadsheets can be a polarizing tool for marketing management.

On the one hand, most marketing leaders have always used spreadsheets—it’s understandably what they’re accustomed to using, so why rock the boat? Investing in and learning the nuances of an unfamiliar product can be intimidating, especially when there’s a learning curve. It’s also important to note that spreadsheets can, indeed, get the job done just fine if there aren’t a ton of moving parts within the marketing organization.

However, the reality is that spreadsheets aren’t the most useful tool for every marketing organization—particularly the complex ones.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Effective Planning, Data Visualization, Martech, Marketing Technology, marketing measurement

B2B companies are often struggling to meet their goals when it comes to the success of new product launches, according to recent SiriusDecisions research. In terms of reaching both performance and financial targets, 56% of B2B companies say that more than half of their new offerings aren’t up to par.

Underscoring the “enormous” costs of falling short in this area—from concerns about reputation to wasted dollars and time—the SiriusDecisions Product Marketing and Management (PMM) Model research brief suggests organizations lay out clearly defined steps to get all of their ducks in a row and better meet performance and financial targets.

Importantly, the PMM Model’s first three stages—discover, define and align—are generally centered on the crucial aspect of planning. The reality is that many product marketers, despite being allocated a hefty portion of marketing’s budget, don’t have enough of a say in marketing’s planning to begin with. Or, oftentimes, marketing plans are so convoluted that they’re not able to get a view into what’s going on anyway.

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Topics: Martech, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, Marketing performance management, marketing strategy, Product Marketing

Note: This post is a timely refresh of a blog we wrote in 2016, The Pros and Cons of Different Revenue Attribution Models.


To truly understand marketing ROI, we must first understand marketing influence. It's important to understand not only how much revenue the marketing organization has influenced but also the degree of influence. Ultimately, organizations want to know how much revenue they can attribute to their marketing efforts. This is not as easy as it sounds.

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Revenue Attribution, Buyer's journey, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, Marketing Performance

Over the past few years, research has been showing a decline in the average tenure of a U.S. chief marketing officer.

In fact, at 3.5 years—cites a new report from consulting firm Korn Ferry—the CMO’s tenure actually ranks as the shortest of all titles in the C-suite (CEO, CFO, CHRO, CMO and CIO/CTO). In comparison, the average for the CMO was 4.1 years in 2016.

The report, which analyzes the top 1,000 U.S. companies (by revenue), notes in particular that CMOs in the technology industry are ranking the lowest on average, with a 3.0-year tenure. At the top were CMOs in the industrial sector, coming in at 4.0 years.

Caren Fleit, leader in Korn Ferry’s global marketing officers practice, suggests the overall tenure problem could be tied to an organization’s deficiency in proving the true value of the CMO—i.e., “a lack of understanding of how powerful this role can really be in terms of driving business outcomes.”

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Topics: Dashboards, Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Revenue Attribution, Hive9, marketing measurement, Marketing Performance

When you look back at 2020 marketing predictions published prior to the pandemic, you might notice advice that ended up being pretty spot-on, a little inaccurate or maybe even more relevant than you anticipated in terms of its representation of our actual state of affairs this year.

Of course, any misrepresentation we discover now is understandably justified, but it’s interesting to look back and see where we thought we would be—as well as what, even through all the chaos, has still rung true.

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Topics: Martech, Marketing Technology, Marketing Insights, Best Practices, marketing measurement, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance, marketing strategy

It’s been nearly five years since we posted a blog denouncing the use of spreadsheets for complex marketing performance management.

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Demand generation, Data silos, Marketing Budgeting, Marketers, marketing measurement, marketing data, collaboration

If you’re ready to leave the trials and tribulations of 2020 marketing in the dust, you might be excited to learn about a new concept that’s been floating around: 2020.5.

With the end of the first half of 2020 now at our doorstep, why not commemorate the milestone by rethinking your strategy for the second half? (Unless, of course, your year has been a breeze, marketing-wise – in that case, carry on as usual.)

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Effective Planning, Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, Marketing Technology, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, marketing data, Marketing performance management, marketing strategy

I am talking about the word “lead” with regard to marketing and CRM systems. We have gotten it completely wrong for decades, and it has caused a great deal of problems and unnecessary expense for many organizations. 

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Buyer's journey, Marketers, Marketing Technology, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, marketing data, B2B, marketing strategy

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! Whether you’re thrilled or crushed you won’t see the Patriots - say what? - in the big game this year, you’re bound to be entertained by at least a few exceedingly pricey commercials, which are estimated to sell for roughly $175,000 per second. Yup, according to CNBC’s estimates, it’ll cost a company a total of $5.25 million for 30 seconds of advertising this year, which is up from $37,500-$42,500 per spot back in 1967, the year of the first Super Bowl.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Martech, marketing measurement, marketing data, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance

One of the best quotes about planning ahead comes from that iconic Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is particularly apt in the world digital marketing, where a lack of specific strategies to achieving clear goals will sink any business, big or small. For that reason, we’ve listed five features every marketer needs to look for when selecting an effective marketing-planning software solution.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Financial Planning, Revenue Attribution, Marketing Budgeting, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, alignment