Marketing Performance

A Marketing Revolution: The Birth of the Strategic MOps Leader
The Marketing Operations REVolution webinar series paid tribute to the excellent work MOps professionals have done providing beacons to guide us into the future. Previously, Marketing Operations (MOps) was considered a catch-all reporting function and a supporting player in the marketing organization. Over the past few years the position has...
How to Align Marketing and Finance for Peak Performance
John O’Rourke is Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Host Analytics. With a background in accounting and finance, John has over 30 years of experience in the software industry, including 20 years of experience in EPM Product Marketing at Hyperion Solutions, Oracle and Host Analytics. While what goes on in...
Increase Marketing Budgets by Becoming a Revenue Driver
Over 60% of marketers now use opportunities, pipeline, revenue, deals, and ROI to measure marketing performance. In the 4th annual State of Pipeline Marketing Survey, over 400 B2B marketers shared how they build growth for their organization through pipeline marketing methodology which impacts the entire funnel rather than only top...

Pipeline-focused marketers are more likely to hit their revenue goals, report alignment with broader business objectives, and be perceived as revenue drivers. The longer marketers wait to implement these changes, the harder it will be and the farther they will fall behind their peers. The time to change is now.
Best Practices for Managing Your Marketing Budget
Welcome! This post is part three of a three-part series on building and managing a marketing budget. Part 1: Best Practices for Organizing Your Marketing BudgetsPart 2: Best Practices for Building Out a Marketing BudgetPart 3: Best Practices for Managing Your Marketing Budget [below] In this third and final installment...
Marketing Planning Best Practices
Marketing planning: it’s something every marketer has to go through. It’s especially challenging because there isn’t really a clear formula for success, yet what happens in marketing planning can make or break a quarter, or even a year. So, what are the best marketers in the world doing around planning? How are they...
Measure Investment Across the Customer Journey
These days, we hear a lot of lip service given to being a “data-driven marketer.” What does it mean to be data-driven? When every move you make can be measured against expected outcomes, you’re data-driven. When you start every business conversation with ‘according to the data’ or ‘Let’s look at...
The Marketing and Finance Alignment Problem is Real
The relationship between the Marketing and Sales organizations gets a lot of press, and for good reason. But there’s another department that’s almost as important for a marketer to cultivate an alliance with: Finance! Although this relationship is often overlooked, alignment with Finance is well worth a marketer’s time. I...
How Agility and Adaptability Become the Future of Marketing Planning
At the 2019 SiriusDecision Summit, there was a huge focus on what’s coming next for marketers. Marketing teams at companies around the world are going through constant turmoil as they are tasked with ever-growing responsibilities for things like the digital transformation of their organization to managing the entire customer journey,...
Marketers Drive Impact by Answering Two Simple Questions
There are many questions marketers field in the course of their day. Where’s that new list of leads? Do we have any good content on strategic planning? How do I reset my Slack password again?  But when it comes to results and driving impact, there are only two questions that...
Take the Next Step: Run Marketing Better
In 2016, we first asked marketers: How do you run marketing? And in asking that seemingly simple question, we inspired thousands of marketers worldwide to think about how they do marketing, versus how they run marketing.  It’s sparked many great conversations with all types of marketers.?  From CMOs to Marketing...
Measuring the ROI of Events
Marketing events (such as conferences, trade shows, etc.) are important to Marketing Operations practitioners. Even though it’s not always MOps folks who attend in person, they’re often intimately involved in the preparation, planning, execution and follow-up. In fact, Marketing Operations can be a make-or-break factor in running a successful event....
Here’s What Every CEO Should Expect From Marketing In 2018
Chief Executive asked us what CEOs should expect from their Marketing leadership as we head into the new year. To stay sharp, compete and win in 2018, we offered 3 key trends every CEO should be apprised of regarding their marketing organization.  A marketing back office renaissance A recent drop...
How Marketing Can Effectively Communicate with Finance - From a Finance Expert
We sat down with one of our customers — Carey Rutigliano, Director of FP&A at Cloudera (formerly Hortonworks) — for a discussion about the Marketing/Finance relationship as a webinar, and here’s a summary. As Director, Financial Planning & Analysis for Cloudera, Carey is the perfect person to help us understand...
Eyes on the Prize: Proving Marketing Impact
None of us should be working in silos. Everyone is part of creating success for their company, and for some departments it’s easy to see their contribution. However, the marketing organization can be a little trickier. Marketers are increasingly asked to prove their impact. But how can they do this?...
Is Your Tech Stack Delivering ROI?
Technology is necessary to keep up with modern marketing, and it extends well beyond social media and advertising. There are a host of different tools to address marketing’s needs and many can be stitched together to create an integrated system. In 2017, almost half of all marketers (48%) had built...
4 Traps to Avoid When Trying to Measure ROI
There’s just no way around it: calculating return on investment is one of the most challenging — and even mysterious — parts of a marketer’s job. Virtually every marketer needs to do it, but far fewer have it fully figured out. In a recent webinar entitled Solving the Mystery of...
5 Ways Marketing Teams Can Work Better in 2021
Marketer’s to-do lists can seem never-ending. Now that work and home have become so blended, it’s even harder to stop work from creeping in when it shouldn’t. None of us want to burn out, but it can be a hard cycle to break. How can marketers work smarter, faster, and...
The Key to Marketing Confidence
With an ever-evolving technology landscape, Marketers are adopters and influencers of innovation but are also susceptible to following trends to fit the status quo. However, one item that has been top of mind with savvy marketers for years is measuring, tracking, predicting and understanding return-on-investment or ROI. One main reason...
Struggling to Measure Up: Why are Marketers Missing the Mark?
Measuring impact is a universal struggle for marketers. More than 60% of Fortune 1000 CMOs claim they cannot quantify the impact of marketing in either the short or long term. There is a whole spectrum of suffering that ranges from having no idea where to begin, to marketers up to...
5 Strategies Marketers Need to Win Corporate Buy-in for Their Plans
According to a study by Russell Reynolds Associates, CMOs think differently than their C-suite colleagues. Senior marketing executives tend to be more “imaginative,” “unconventional” and “willing to test limits” than CFOs, CEOs, CROs and CIOs. These traits make CMOs great leaders for transformation and growth initiatives, but may also explain some of...