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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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How do you know whether your lead-generation program is working and delivering a good ROI for the company? You may be doing some lead tracking to understand conversion rates and customer profitability, which is great. But the sales team will inevitably let Marketing know that (1) Marketing was just a small step in closing the sale so the sales team deserves the credit; (2) the sales team would have found and closed those leads anyway, so there is no incremental value; or (3) the leads are fine, but there is just never enough. We need reliable measurements to both prove and improve our marketing effectiveness.

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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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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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Marketing automation—one of the new buzzwords in marketing—bridges the gap between lead generation and the sales force. Its goal is to improve Sales and Marketing alignment by passing over only sales-ready leads. There are really good reasons why you should be interested in marketing automation. There are really bad ones, too.

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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.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Marketing Management

Your sales and marketing organizations are the most critical links to customers. The alignment of those two organizations determines how well a company attracts buyers and sells to them. The relationship is more than just a simple handoff at the point a lead is generated; it is the foundation for profitable revenue growth.

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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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As companies embrace the idea of aligning their decentralized sales and marketing teams, they sometimes make counter-productive decisions. To successfully align Sales and Marketing—and, ultimately close more deals—dodge these five common mistakes.

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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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What does "best practices" in Marketing Operations look like, and how do industry-leading companies operate and integrate this highly valuable function? Marketing Operations Partners recently polled more than 80 marketing leaders to find out.

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Marketing effectiveness—achieving it requires an organization with the resources and know-how to achieve the fine balance between the art and science of marketing. In other words, it take a little of both to create marketing programs that meet measurable business objectives. Here are seven hurdles to marketing effectiveness, along with proven techniques for how to surmount them.

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As today's markets consolidate and become increasingly competitive, and as buyers become more sophisticated and demanding, customer references gain even greater importance. But many customer reference programs are stuck in outmoded thinking, and that could be significantly holding your company back. So how can your reference program evolve to meet today's challenges?

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The sales playbook captures your company's knowledge about its markets, value propositions, offers, competitors, and best practices. These are the very elements that fall within the marketing organization's domain, which is why marketing plays a strategic role in developing the playbook.

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Marketing can play a critical role in improving loyalty with the customers your company wants to keep. In fact, there are three specific areas where marketing can have a significant impact.

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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?