Serfwerks

The Importance of Knowing Your Position

Please use your imagination as you look at the bullet list below. The list is describing a car; try to imagine what it looks like, how much it would cost, and who would make it: Large-sized luxury sedan 4.6 liter V-8 engine Adjustable air suspension Reclining, heated, cooled, and messaging rear seats Adaptive HID headlights [...]

Serfwerks Presents at SBDC

Serfwerks will be teaching the strategic marketing workshop through the Small Business Development Center at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, August 4, 2010. Topics covered include, marketing performance analysis, customer segmentation, positioning, branding, competitive analysis, and performance measurement.

Automobile Owners Unite

At Serfwerks, we are presently assisting a client by researching the attitudes and behaviors of automobile owners regarding the maintenance and repair of their vehicle(s). As such, if you own a car, we need you. Please take a few minutes to take a brief survey to gauge your thoughts about car maintenance and repair. Your [...]

Serfwerks Presents at Chamber University

Serfwerks has been selected by the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce to present at its monthly Chamber University series on July 15th at the Zion's Bank branch located at 462 W. 800 North in Orem, Utah.

Marketing and Brain Orientation

marketers who can successfully understand the orientation (left- vs. right-brained) of their target audiences and then draft a strategy (factual/evidence vs. emotional) that appeals more appropriately to that audience will find that they are more successful in engaging their audiences through the marketing function.

The Maturation of Social Media Marketing

Wow! Social Media sure is popular. And its use as a marketing vehicle has greatly accelerated as social media networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have been inundated with Babyboomers. In fact, the research organization Forester predicts that spending on social media marketing will soon outpace spending for email marketing (which is in some [...]

Forecasted Market Share

According to studies by Kalyanaram et. al., Urban et. al, and Urban et. al., forecasted market share for consumer packaged goods and prescription anti-ulcer drugs divided by the first entrant’s market share roughly equals one divided by the square root of the order of market entry. In other words, those who aren’t first to the [...]

Marketing Losing Its Mojo? Not So Fast

Although there is something exhilarating about marketing or advertising that positions an idea in a way that you've never thought about it before or expresses it using a completely unique, innovative or creative method, let us not forget that there is a difference between fine art and marketing. Fine art exists for the sake of creativity. Marketing exists for the sake of achieving some organizational objective. I'd pay top dollar to see a CMO defend his/her budget (or job for that matter) playing the "but we did some really creative work" card.

More on Standardized Marketing Metrics

As a follow up on our recent post about standardized marketing metrics, we explore the conversation as it progresses within the marketing community. Marketing NPV published an interesting article furthering the case for (and against) a standardized set of marketing metrics. In particular, they argue that CMOs should be spending more time asking a set of difficult, yet critical, questions about their marketing strategies and efforts then working to develop a standardized set of marketing metrics

Thoughts on Fast Company’s CMO Balancing Act: Marketing Creativity vs. Analytics

It is only responsible for Fast Company to publish an article about a CMO's balancing of creativity and analytics in its most recent issue featuring the top 100 creative people in business. We've seen too many cool and creative ideas and approaches to marketing flounder when it comes to what matters most to business—driving bottom line results.

Marketing Capabilities and Firm Performance

A recent article found a stronger correlation between marketing capabilities and firm performance than those for both R&D and operations.

Standardized Marketing Metrics

The problem is that there isn't a standard set of marketing practices on which to base standardized metrics. Although nearly every organization may have a web site or a brochure, the usage of those tools is very disparate. marketing should be tied to the organization's key performance indicators, including profitability for a profit-driven organization. Beyond that, the organization should break down its KPIs according to its sales cycle and measure marketing's performance at every stage in that cycle.