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Debunking Five Analyst Relations Myths
Analyst relations is easily the most misunderstood function in marketing. I’ve been involved with analyst relations — or AR — for over a decade, working on dozens of Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves. I’ve experienced the impact that analyst relations, when done well, can have on growth. And I know how much time and effort it takes to…
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What I Learned Building an App on the Drift Platform
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away — I was a Computer Science major at the University of Illinois. I grew up programming in BASIC on a variety of hardware, including my beloved TI 99/4A and then later a Commodore Amiga. My parents came up with a brilliant strategy to get me to learn…
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Your Best Startup Strategy is Better Execution
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, not that time. The other one. The time where your startup gets together and starts planning for the upcoming year. Some of you have already finished this process, but with my fiscal year ending in January, I’m currently in the midst of it. That’s why this…
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Predictive Account Based Inbound Agile Marketing Automation
We’ve hit peak Account Based Marketing. I’ve received 5 emails this week from vendors extolling the virtues of ABM. I’ve been invited to one dinner, two lunches, received a $50 Amazon gift card, and was told by Marketo that “According to 97% of marketers, account-based marketing (ABM) achieved a higher ROI than other marketing initiatives.”…
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Stop The Lead Scoring Madness
I recently came across a lead scoring article on the Mattermark blog that reminded me of a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while: the way nearly everyone is doing lead scoring is totally wrong. In the modern era of data-driven marketing where marketers boast about being able to connect every penny of…
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A Primer on Developer Marketing
TL;DR marketing to developers is hard, and you are probably doing it wrong. The unstoppable rise of the developer My former Acquia colleague David Churbuck introduced me to RedMonk’s Steve O’Grady and his 2014 book about how developers are taking over the world, called The New Kingmakers. The idea is that successful companies empower developers…
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When Sales and Marketing Best Practices Become Average Practices
No one got fired for buying IBM? In the 80s, IBM dominated tech from the desktop to the datacenter. Buyers often picked IBM because they were safe choice, not the right choice. It didn’t matter. Buying IBM became the accepted best practice for CIOs. It was an emotional decision, not a rational one. People generally don’t…
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Why I’m Killing the Marketing Qualified Lead
Five years ago, I was sitting at my desk working on a PowerPoint pitch for an upcoming customer visit. My boss stopped by and asked me a question that would change my life. Hey Tom, can you run marketing? Prior to that moment, I had spent my entire career in technical sales with a few…
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Is Specialization Bad for Startup Marketing?
We’re starting to run a Scrumban process in RapidMiner marketing. Scrumban is a great way accelerate output by creating more transparency around priorities in the hectic world of startup marketing. We’ve got our Scrumban board, with all colorful kanbans beautifully laid out into various columns. RapidMiner’s Scrumban board, blurred As we get into Scrumban, we often…