Customer-Centric: How-to articles covering the latest marketing tactics, tips, and strategies.

• Build a Customer-Centric Marketing Automation StrategyMeghan Keaney Anderson
  The if-then logic of the marketing automation process can lead to a snarl of over-communication, with only a loose relevance to the recipient's true interests and needs. It doesn't have ...
  Content, Content Marketing, Customer Acquisition, Customer-Centric, Customer Insight, Customer Relationships, Email, Email Campaigns, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation
• Marketing and IT: Big Data an Obstacle, an Opportunity, and Key to Customer-Centricity
  Though frequently at odds, marketing and IT executives agree that harnessing Big Data is imperative to building a customer-centric corporate culture; they also agree that a lack of alignment, rigid ...
  B2C, Business Intelligence, Chief Marketing Officer, Customer-Centric, Customer Insight, Data, Management, Market Research, Marketing Challenges, Measurement
• Landing Page Optimization Is Not a Strategy, CXO IsMark Simpson
  Landing pages aren't dead—or even unimportant—but you shouldn't be treating them as a standalone strategy. Rather, you should be focusing on the big picture: optimizing the entire customer experience.
  Customer-Centric, Customer Experience, Customer Insight, Customer Loyalty, Data, E-Commerce, Landing Pages, Mobile Marketing, Personalization, Social Media
• Personalized Marketing Drives Buyer Readiness and SalesLenna Garibian
  Cross-channel, customer-centric marketing—the practice of tailoring offers and promotions to consumers across multiple touch points based on their past shopping or browsing experiences—seems to increase buyer readiness, engagement, and sales ...
  Customer Behavior, Customer-Centric, E-Commerce, Email, Email Marketing, Research Summaries, Sales
• Five Advantages of Agile MarketingLior Levin
  Agile marketing prioritizes the needs of the customer and focuses on a rapid response to customers and current trends. Here are five reasons you should consider adopting the strategies of ...
  Customer-Centric, Lead Generation, Management, Marketing Strategy
• Pavlov's Dog, or How to Develop and Deliver a Consistent Brand ExperienceMichael DiFrisco
  When we hear a name, see a logo, whiff a particular scent, or encounter a sensation, we are conditioned—like Pavlov's dogs—to respond in a specific way.
  Brand Loyalty, Brand Positioning, Branding, Customer Behavior, Customer-Centric, Customer Experience, Customer Relationships, Customer Service, Positioning, Value Propositions
• Power Up Your Marketing to Prove Business Value [Infographic]Laura Patterson
  Numerous studies throughout 2012 reiterated just how challenged marketers are in proving Marketing's business value. Some marketers, though, are cracking the code, and we can learn lessons from them as ...
  Branding, Customer-Centric, Customer Relationships, Marketing Analytics, Marketing Automation, Marketing Tips
• Five Tips for Building a Case for Marketing in the BoardroomChris Chariton
  Marketing is often viewed as a cost center, and marketers meet resistance when their budgets are being approved. But Marketing is an asset, and you need to position it to ...
  B2B Marketing, Career Management, Chief Marketing Officer, Collaboration, Customer-Centric, Marketing Strategy, Measurement, Metrics, Sales, Strategy
• Brands That Surged (and Brands That Sank) After Hurricane SandyGregg Lipman
  When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, millions lost electricity, heat, and water. But just a few days later, many companies promoting to those millions had—cluelessly—gone back to business as ...
  Branding, Corporate Communications, Customer-Centric, Customer Relationships, Direct Marketing, E-Commerce, Email, Marketing Challenges, Public Relations, Reputation Management
• Humanizing the Web With Personalization 2.0: Three Tips to Get StartedJohn Kottcamp
  We're not talking "Welcome back John" and certainly not "Dear Valued Customer." Real personalization goes much deeper than that today. Call it Personalization 2.0: it means the delivering the right ...
  Brand Loyalty, Content, Customer-Centric, Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Customer Relationships, Digital Theory, Marketing Strategy, Relationship Marketing, Web Content

Customer-Centric: Podcasts containing in-depth interviews with smart marketers from all walks of life.

• Content, Customer-Centricity, and the Power of Data: Acxiom's Tim Suther on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]by Matthew Grant
  This week's guest on Marketing Smarts is Tim Suther, chief marketing and strategy officer for Acxiom, a firm that Tim referred to as "the original Big Data company"; FRONTLINE called it "one of the biggest companies you've never heard of."
  Advertising, B2B Marketing, Content, Customer-Centric, Data, Digital Marketing, Marketing Smarts, Segmentation, Technology
• Rethink Your Audience: Author and Digital Strategist Sam Ford on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]by Matthew Grant
  Though living in a new era of participatory media, our notions of what constitutes an audience and what audiences actually do has not changed much since the broadcast era—and that's a problem, argues Sam Ford.
  B2B Marketing, Community, Content Marketing, Corporate Communications, Customer-Centric, Customer Engagement, Digital Theory, Marketing Smarts, Social Media
• Achieving True Sales and Marketing Alignment: Constant Contact's Rick Jensen on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]by Matthew Grant
  Rick Jensen heads up both sales and marketing at Constant Contact, which is an interesting predicament to be in, considering the evolving relationship between Marketing and Sales. I thought he might have something interesting to say about the subject. I ...
  B2B Marketing, Chief Marketing Officer, Customer-Centric, Email Marketing, High-Tech Marketing, Management, Marketing Operations, Marketing Smarts, Product Marketing, Sales and Advertising
• The Easiest Way to Be Successful in Social: Jay Baer Talks to Marketing Smarts [Podcast]by Matthew Grant
  In this week's episode of Marketing Smarts, author and social media strategist Jay Baer explains why the easiest way to be successful in social is to "be social about content instead of being social about your company."
  Content Marketing, Customer-Centric, Marketing Smarts, Social Media
• Is Giving the Secret to Getting? Bob Burg Guests on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]by Matthew Grant
  In this week's episode of Marketing Smarts, author Bob Burg explains why giving—consistently providing value to others—is not only a nice way to live life but also a financially profitable way that helps build valuable relationships.
  Customer-Centric, Customer Relationships, Marketing Smarts, Relationship Marketing

Customer-Centric: Online seminar broadcasts from the best minds in marketing

• MarketingProfs University: Developing an Email Strategy That Keeps People ConnectedBroadcast on 3/15/2012 with Morgan Stewart
  This PRO seminar and first class of MarketingProfs University's Email Marketing Master Course will identify the critical strategic elements for successful email programs, tie those elements to your specific business objectives, and demonstrate how to continually optimize your email program based on customer feedback.
  B2B Marketing, Customer-Centric, Customer Experience, Customer Relationships, Email, Email Campaigns, Email Marketing, Feedback, Marketing Strategy
• Customer Experience Intensive: What CEM Means for Your Brand and Your MarketingBroadcast on 4/30/2009 with Leigh Duncan-Durst
  Get past the hype and take a pragmatic look at customer experience management.
  Branding, CRM, Customer-Centric, Customer Experience, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tips
• Creating a Customer-Centric, Measurable Marketing PlanBroadcast on 10/16/2008 with Laura Patterson
  An effective marketing plan establishes your marketing strategy, defines measurable marketing objectives that support your marketing strategy and the methods you will deploy for achieving these objectives. Where do you start?
  Customer-Centric, Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tips, Measurement
• Actionable Web Analytics: Unleash the Marketing Power of Your Web DataBroadcast on 8/28/2008 with Avinash Kaushik
  You don't necessarily need MORE data about your online visitors' behavior... you need to pinpoint the data that will help you make better marketing and design decisions. Getting it might not be as painful as you think.
  Customer-Centric, Marketing Tips, Metrics, Segmentation, Testing, Web Analytics, Websites
• Email Customization: Getting Personal to Deepen Relationships, Generate Additional Sales, and MoreBroadcast on 5/22/2008 with Regina Brady
  Most marketers use a “one size fits all" approach to email marketing instead of segmenting their campaigns. There are some simple but effective personalization techniques that can be used to make a mailing feel more targeted to the individual—and earn better ROI.
  Customer-Centric, Customer Relationships, E-Commerce, Email Deliverability, Email Marketing, Personalization, Segmentation, Targeting
• How to Make Marketing Indispensable to SalesBroadcast on 2/7/2008 with Michael Nick
  If salespeople are going to succeed in today's market, they desperately need your help. Unfortunately, most marketers are focused on the wrong message, which they then use to develop unusable collateral that ends up in the wastebasket.
  Collaboration, Customer-Centric, Marketing Strategy, Measurement, Print Collateral, ROI, Sales, Value Propositions
• Seth Godin: How to Avoid The Meatball SundaeBroadcast on 1/3/2008 with Seth Godin
  This seminar with Seth Godin is perfect for anyone wrestling with the collision of traditional marketing and the New Marketing that's happening online. It's all about avoiding the meatball sundae. "What's a Meatball Sundae?" you ask ...
  Creativity, Customer-Centric, Marketing Inspiration, Marketing Strategy, Positioning, Writing
• Customer Message Management 2: Confuser or Clarifier? Creating Customer-Relevant MessagingBroadcast on 6/8/2007 with Tim Riesterer
  This seminar provides you with a detailed tutorial on the tools and templates you can use to make sure your company can compete on clarity and avoid parity in your value propositions.
  Collaboration, Creativity, Customer-Centric, Measurement, Targeting, Value Propositions, Writing
• Customer Message Management 1: Four Steps to Improving the Sales-to-Customer ConversationBroadcast on 6/7/2007 with Tim Riesterer
  This presentation will give you four essential steps for aligning marketing strategy with sales execution – to maximize impact at the all important point of customer conversation. The process outlined is \ called Customer Message Management™.
  Brand Awareness, Collaboration, Customer-Centric, Marketing Tips, Sales
• Customer-Centric Communications: It's All Different NowBroadcast on 5/24/2007 with Jeff Krawitz
  People listen when you speak their language about things they value. In MarComm, it’s our job to do that, one customer at a time; it's simple if you have two or three customers. It gets a bit tricky when you have a few thousand or more.
  Creativity, Customer-Centric, Customer Engagement, Marketing Tips, Positioning, Segmentation, Writing

Customer-Centric: Tutorials — tactical marketing know-how in just 10 minutes from subject matter experts

• Take 10: Find Out Who Owns That Website and How Important It IsReleased on 9/3/2010 with Scott Swigart
  In this webcast, Scott Swigart, a competitive intelligence and market research expert, will show you how to measure the influence of a website and determine who's behind it. In addition, you'll see how to determine an influencer's motivations, which is the first step in winning them over to your side.
  Customer-Centric, Customer Engagement, Links, Metrics, Take 10, Websites

Customer-Centric: Marketing downloads for the busy professional

• Customer-Centric Innovation: How Companies Engage Customers in Product Development and Radical Innovation
  Engaging your customers can help increase satisfaction, loyalty, and brand awareness. This research report will help you understand the role of customers in product development.
  Customer Advisory Programs, Customer-Centric, Market Research, Product Management