This was an exciting program for us at Marketing Matters Live. It was the launch of our marketing author series where we feature a leading marketing author. And we had the perfect book to talk about today – a book that if you haven’t yet read it, you must. I mean it. Rarely does a book like this come along that is so simple, so straightforward, and so potentially powerful.

With more and more messages being sent out by marketers, and few of them ever lasting longer than the advertising delivering them, we need a way to make our messages stand out from the crowd – and ad budgets have little to do with all this.

Joining me today was author Chip Heath, ½ of the Heath brother team who wrote the book Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. Again, go buy the book.

Though today's program hit briefly on the book's formula for SUCCESs, we spent the most time on being unexpected. There are lots of ways to do this without compromising a brand, or being forgotten amongst the hype of being unexpected. My favorite example in the show was the Jetta commercials. Most excellent!

We had a great group of callers for the show and will likely be taking callers in other shows as well. So, start listening LIVE! Follow up information and a free chapter of the book can be found at the author's Web site www.madetostick.com.

Be sure to listen in September when we host another author -- Paul Gillin -- who wrote The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media.

Posted by David Kinard at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This year I made it my personal goal to dive deep into all things marketing ROI. I’ve read books, articles, and attended seminars, and let me tell you…this stuff has been challenging to figure out.

Sure, marketing ROI requires good measurements and measurement systems. It involves analyses, a solid financial framework, and – most important of all – a process for applying any insights you’ve got back into the strategic and tactical decision making processes. But it's sometimes easier said than done.

On today's program, diving deep into the subject of marketing ROI was a familiar guest to the show. In fact, after I interviewed him last year, I was so impressed I immediately bought his book right after the show -- Marketing ROI. Jim Lenskold, president of Lenskold Group, talked with us about how smart customer and sales segmentation provides more insight and can deliver more profitable marketing initiatives.

Key to the discussion were these three point:

**Marketing ROI is a financial issue. We as marketers must be able to translate what it is we are doing into profitability to the company...not just performance of a particular channel or medium.

**Segmentation based on demographis and psychographics is great as it provides meaning and relevance to our messages, but we must ALSO segment on customer value to the company -- who are the most profitable customer groups to target.

**Value-tiered marketing investments provide greater flexibility in marketing spending and allows us to spend more on the right customers (as opposed to those bottom feeders).

I met Jim at Mplanet 2006 in Orlando and have had the chance to talk with him several times. He's smart, easy to understand, and I like his stuff.

Posted by David Kinard at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)