Here's an image that might be daunting, commonplace or old-school to you, depending on your stage of life or expertise in electronics: the back of an A/V receiver with a bunch of cables sticking into it.

From your speaker to your subwoofer to your HDMI to your Bluetooth to your translucent green Nintendo 64 (did we mention old-school?) connections, the A/V receiver is the operational backbone of all the components of your home theater system. Without it, all of your connections become a convoluted mess of cables without a home from which to function properly.

Now think of everything that encompasses your marketing performance management process.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Hive9, Marketing Insights, Campaigns, Marketing performance management, marketing strategy

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

The year 2020 has demonstrated why clear visibility into plans more than just once a year, half or even quarter is essential for marketing leaders. If you can’t see what’s happening in the first place, you’re not going to be able to adjust accordingly for sudden market changes.

Underscoring just how vital resiliency is when it comes to marketing planning, a recent blog from Forrester SiriusDecisions’ Meta Karagianni puts it this way:

“The ability to manage unplanned events and calibrate and adjust sales and marketing plans quickly is no longer a nice-to-have but a critical muscle B2B sales and marketing leaders must develop.”

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Topics: Effective Planning, Marketing Technology, Marketing performance management, 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

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

To justify their marketing spend, marketing leaders are under constant pressure from their organization to deliver ROI. Right now especially, with ever-changing plans and budgets, they’re grappling with the best way to do so, whether that’s through reallocating funds from canceled events, reducing their overall budget, or, as everyone has heard, pivoting (the marketing buzzword of 2020?) their campaign strategy to address their audience’s focus on remote work or virtual events.

To get a sense of the current struggle, let’s take a look at what marketing leaders Denise and Christine have been up to.

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Topics: sales enablement, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance, alignment

Figuring out your optimal marketing strategy during a global pandemic is unprecedented. There’s a lot of helpful advice out there, but because we’ve simply never experienced a crisis like this in the age of digital marketing, it’s safe to say nobody knows exactly what the secret recipe is for marketing your brand, reallocating your spend and, in the end, maintaining strong ROI.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Budgeting, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance, marketing

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

In the fourth season of The Office, Michael Scott, laden with financial troubles, decided he needed to declare bankruptcy, leading him to announce to his colleagues, “I declare bankruptcy!”

Spoiler: His verbally declaring bankruptcy didn’t automatically launch the legal process. In the marketing world, the same can be said for deciding to adopt an entirely new approach for your team. For instance, agile marketing - becoming more popular in the B2B community in particular - can’t be implemented by waving a magic wand and assuming everyone is on board with the concept. Instead, it takes proper planning, training, and, importantly, a collaborative and centralized platform.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Marketing Insights, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance, marketing strategy, agile marketing

When it comes to choosing a new wall calendar for the new year, you’ve got some tough choices in front of you. Lighthouses of New England? Best The Office quotations? Rescued kittens in baskets, perhaps? Aesthetics or entertainment might be the only thing determining your yearly wall calendar choice, but when it comes to selecting an appropriate calendar for your marketing planning, you should keep a few vital functions in mind.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Financial Planning, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance, marketing strategy