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CMO Strategy Series: Marketing & Finance Are Stronger Together
Written by Samantha Bannister, SVP Finance and Operations at Allocadia Change is never easy. But looking at change as an opportunity to improve and to reassess is how we grow – both as individuals and as organizations. In my experience (at other companies, not at Allocadia!), a consistent area for...
Three Marketing Lessons from Super Bowl Ads
Super Bowl 2021 will look very different than previous years: no parties and limited fans present. But we can all still look forward to one of the best parts of the game: Super Bowl ads. 48% of viewers are tuning in for the big game, but the second biggest reason...
Top 5 Agile Tips for Marketing Planning in 2021
It’s 2021, but we’re still dealing with the effects from 2020. In-person events are a non-starter and digital is still ruling lives inside and outside of work. As marketers are left asking themselves a familiar question: “How can I create impact and do more with limited resources?” To drive revenue...
CMO Strategy Series: 5 Key Learnings from 2020
From great challenges, come great opportunities – and 2020 brought more than enough challenges across every spectrum of our lives.  This year was full of more strategic pivots than any other. But every one of those pivots was an opportunity to learn and grow. Marketers learned to adapt to new...
CMO Strategy Series: Marketing Investment Strategy for 2021
Written by Julia Stead, CMO at Allocadia In May – what feels like a million years ago – my first CMO Strategy Series blog covered short-term vs long-term spend. Back then I recommended marketers support the growth of immediate revenue streams, adopt an agile budgeting and planning strategy, and make all...
Bouncing Back in 2021: Increase Growth by Planning Better
Want to boost your company’s growth next year by changing only one internal process? Improve your team’s planning practices.  Marketing organizations with the best planning processes know that even great plans can be derailed unexpectedly. While some organizations were moving toward agile processes before the pandemic, everyone had to change...
CMO Strategy Series: Aligning as One Team
Written by Jocelyn Brown, SVP Customers and Revenue, Allocadia There’s no stepping around the fact that the way we communicate and work in 2020 has drastically changed. Allocadia already had remote employees – including myself and our CMO Julia – so we had the infrastructure to support the shift to...
How COVID Changed Marketing & What Marketers Should Do About It
The world has changed significantly since the beginning of this year in response to the global pandemic and financial crisis. Marketing is not the same – for better and for worse.  The farther we move from the initial and abrupt challenges, the more marketers need to think about how to...
CMO Strategy Series: Navigating the Digital Buyer’s Journey with Sales
Written by Julia Stead, CMO at Allocadia 2020 has provided no shortage of challenges for marketers. This shift to all-digital has had ramifications across multiple facets of how we work together, within our own teams and across departments. While I long for the future when I can hug my colleagues again,...
CMO Strategy Series: Marketing & Sales Alignment Delivers Revenue
Elissa Fink joined Tableau Software in 2007 as CMO, and helped build it from a start-up with $5 million in annual revenue to a public company that was valued at $10.79 B prior to its acquisition by Salesforce. After retiring in 2018, she now divides her time teaching at University...
Demand vs Awareness: Where Marketers Should Invest in 2021
Short-term vs long-term. Demand vs awareness. Where did you invest? Marketers had expectations for 2020, and by March the reality of how this year would go was already very different. Facing an unknown future, everyone was asking the same question: Where do I pivot my marketing budget and strategy for...
CMO Strategy Series: Climbing the Career Jungle Gym with Drift's CMO
Allocadia CMO Q&A Series with Tricia Gellman, CMO at Drift 1. What was your first marketing role? I actually didn’t start in marketing. I have a BA in graphic design and was originally hired as an “evangelist” helping designers understand why to use a Mac, at Apple. The challenge of...
CMO Strategy Series: Shifting Paradigms: The Future of Marketing Planning
Written by Kathleen Schaub, former IDC Analyst Innovation adoption in marketing happens in a predictable pattern. In my years as an IDC analyst I saw that strong early indicators appear when a trend is likely to become more widely adopted.  Today, those indicators point to a significant paradigm shift in...
Growth Hacking: Can You Do It Without Marketing & Finance Alignment?
When talking about marketing and finance, we’re usually talking about their differences. Marketing is creative, while finance is by-the-book. We never talk about all the similarities finance and marketing share, and that contributes to the divide.  The CFO’s mandate is to drive efficient growth despite economic and business hurdles. Today’s...
CMO Strategy Series: Three New Approaches to Planning Amidst the Pandemic
Written by Julia Stead, CMO at Allocadia The economic recession caused by COVID is still in its infancy, and most experts agree that the effects will be long-lasting. The intensity of focus on marketing spend is exponentially higher during a recession, so it’s paramount that all marketing plans are tied to...
CMO Strategy Series: How Can We Measure Success During and Post-COVID
Written by Julia Stead, CMO at Allocadia As we near the end of the quarter, measuring performance is being pushed to the forefront of conversations. This first full quarter with COVID-19 impacting businesses has been a whirlwind: we went from chaos and triage to building a roadmap to recovery. You can’t...
Planning is No Longer Planning - It’s Marketing Fitness and Agility
And 9 other tips from CMOs on how to lead in a crisis We spoke with an expert panel of marketing leaders to talk through the challenges faced by marketing organizations and how they’re leading through this crisis by adopting a ‘wartime CMO’ mentality. Our CMO Julia Stead hosted and...
CMO Strategy Series: Short-term vs Long-term Spend During COVID-19
Written by Julia Stead, CMO at Allocadia After our recent MarTech session, I received a really interesting question from Erica Seidel, Founder of The Connective Good, about marketing spend: Some CMOs are asking about how to respond when a CEO tells a CMO to only focus on short-term spending. Should...