What if you could tap into the minds of 3,000 marketers to find out where they stand when it comes to social media marketing? How valuable would it be to know how your peers are handing the time commitments, social media platforms and measurement?
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The most successful business owners have discovered that you do not sell a product or service: You sell the idea. Today’s post explains why they do it and why YOU should consider doing the same!
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The other day, a marketing colleague told me she was feeling under pressure to move all her efforts to inbound, or “pull,” marketing. “Outbound is bad,” she said. What? Well, I guess her feeling is understandable. Inbound marketing is all the rage today. Hubspot promotes it. Marketo promotes it. Seth Godin promotes it. With the new popularity of pull marketing, B2B marketers may be under the mistaken impression that push marketing is dead—or should be. How wrong they are. And here’s why.
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Last week, I posted the following update across a couple of networks:
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Let me start by saying that the 50% revenue increase I’m projecting for B2B marketing automation in 2013 is a very healthy one. In actual dollars, the $250 million gain is much larger than the $175 million growth in 2012. So if you’re working in the industry, don’t circulate that resume just yet.
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Business owners often view marketing as something they must finish so they can get back to work.
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Marketing measurement is a perennially popular topic. I myself have just completed a white paper on Top Five Metrics for Revenue Generation Marketers, sponsored by LeadMD, and touched on it in a separate Gleanster study, Revenue Performance Management – The Evolution of Marketing Automation. With both of these on my mind, I also paid new attention to Eloqua’s list of five key revenue performance indicators (listed in the ‘Take a tour’ graphic on this page). The obvious question was whether these three sources agreed about what’s important.
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We are addicted to shortcuts. Regardless of the structure and rules of the contest at hand, some among us will stretch the boundaries seeking an edge over our opponent. Perhaps this is just human nature, or maybe it’s more prevalent in America where we cherish our opportunity to have a strong role in our personal success. This insatiable desire to do more, to do better, to just do, is the psychological scaffolding thats supports hedge fund melt-downs, cyclists’ doping, and websites that sell college term papers.
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Marketers sometimes say things to me like, “Well, nobody in our industry is doing that kind of robust content marketing, so why should we start?”
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I like Michael J. Fox.

I’m of the vintage that grew up with Alex P. Keaton, Teen Wolf, and Marty McFly. Further, I lost my grandfather to Parkinson’s a few years ago, and Fox’s efforts to raise funds to combat the disease are remarkable.
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