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For decades, the prevailing wisdom was that nonprofits should learn from for-profit enterprises how to become "more businesslike." Many nonprofits thus embraced best practices in branding, marketing, service delivery, money management, and leadership. They have also learned how to keep different business models running simultaneously. To be successful in all these endeavors has required nonprofits to develop approaches and skills—particularly in communication and branding—that (surprise!) for-profits can now learn from.

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You already know that a dashboard is an essential tool for improving (and proving) marketing effectiveness. These five steps will help you and your marketing team get started on the road to creating a dashboard that works for you.

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To make customer experience stick as part of your operation, you need to have an organized and phased approach for integrating it into your organization. Without it, customer experience becomes one more customer-focused tactic that your company tried for a while and then abandoned.

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To significantly boost sales, you've got to understand base sales drivers and marketing's impact on them. Learn from examples that illustrate how factor analysis can help you yield consistently high ROI.

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These days, if a marketing organization is to deliver value and show tangible results, it must build an analytical culture. If yours is like most marketing organizations, you already pack a strong dose of creativity. Analytics enables you to combine that creativity with fact-based decision-making—with powerful results.

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It makes sense that a company’s marketing messages, content and other output work to meet the needs of its sales reps and the requirements of the selling process, right? Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen.

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Should legitimate marketers continue to work with third-party list brokers or build their own in-house lists? Also this week: What are your best practices for selling to the CEO?

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To help manage more complex marketing processes, marketers are increasingly turning to software technology known as MOM, or Marketing Operations Management. Here are 10 frequently asked Q&As about the technology.

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Most trademark licensing relationships are defined and evaluated based on the terms in a license agreement contract. In the case of a brand extension license, there can be a lot at stake, including the health and wellbeing of the licensor's brand. Surprisingly, many license agreements do not include specific terms or requirements that reflect key marketing objectives.

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If you're competing on price, you'll never achieve maximum profitability. Instead, everyone's job must become value creation. But are you sure that you're providing value to your customers? Even if your answer is an emphatic yes, you might want to take a closer look.

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Much as you might dread it, planning and budgeting are not going away. So you may as well make the effort to get more value out of the process. It's actually an ideal time for putting basic ROI analysis to use. Here are four ways to use financial insight to create more profitable strategies and tactical plans while building greater credibility with your executive team.

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It's the first week of the quarter. You're on deadline to get new programs and sales tools in gear. Meanwhile, the sales team is having its kickoff—and changing the success criteria for your lead machine! They're not deliberately changing the game on you. They're in "New Quarter's Resolutions" mode. If they made goal last quarter, their quotas are higher. If they didn't, they're in the hot seat. Either way, they're re-evaluating and retooling the sales model—and now your carefully planned lead-generation programs are out of alignment.

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In this MarketingProfs Classic, Jim Lenskold reminds us that, since the dreaded annual planning and budgeting process isn't going away, it's time to make the effort to get more value out of the process. Jim writes, "Here are four ways to use financial insight to create more profitable strategies and tactical plans while building greater credibility with your executive team."

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Today's buyer is in control. This transition means that our sales teams are no longer required as a conduit of information. Industry websites, vendor sites, blogs, social media, and search all make the required information readily available and, by doing so, leave the sales representative out of the room. As a result, it's impossible for the sales rep to read a buyer's physical body language to understand what aspects of a message are of interest and determine whether the prospect wants to move forward. Marketing teams must therefore instead read a buyer's digital body language—his or her Web activities, email responses, search activities, and engagements in events and demos—to understand what messages are working.

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If you are going to implement a corporate social responsibility program, do so responsibly. A poorly executed program can negatively affect the business in many ways. It takes one missing element, one arrogant blogger, or one angry ex-employee to publicly point out the failings of the good works that the company is so proudly touting. When done well, a socially responsible program is a tremendous advantage to the entire business. When done carelessly, it can be ruinous.

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Marketing dashboards are all the rage. Perhaps because every other management function has a dashboard, VPs of marketing feel they need to have one, too. Or maybe because dashboards can be a great tool to help you manage your business processes. But it is entirely possible you could be deploying a useless software-based tool.

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Now that fall is here, you are likely tackling your marketing plan and budget. The pressure for marketing organizations to justify their spending, prove their programs' contribution to the organization, and demonstrate value is only increasing. These three steps can help ensure you are properly aligned with your organization and help you secure your marketing budget.