The Cluetrain Manifesto 10th Anniversary Edition was written by Rick Levine (@ricklevine),  Christopher Locke (@clockerb), Doc Searls (@dsearls), David Weinberger.

For those of you who never read it, let’s cut to the chase…

Blame it on us for actually waiting a year after this anniversary edition was released.  Also scold us for not reading the [/amazon]original eleven years ago.  But the newer edition is a disappointment.

Not because the original 95 Theses have been taken for granted or have completely lost their relevance.

Rather, it is because the first 70 pages of the book are a self-congratulatory, rambling introductory by each of the four authors which sets the tone for the rest of the book and tarnishes the original genius behind the innovative, valuable thoughts.

One critique of the original manifesto – Yes, markets are conversations, and inherently no longer one-sided.  But the “command and control” aspect of running a marketing organization should not go away.  If anything, the Internet now makes Marketing more asymmetrical – so much data is unpredictably pinging around the world in both structured and unstructured formats.  And despite those that don’t like referring to “targets,” “capturing” customers, and other war-like phrases in the business world, Marketers need to use web-based technologies to gather, store, analyze, share and act upon data that originates with conversations and fosters even more conversations especially since they are obviously in competition with other organizations.  Such an asymmetrical “battlespace” for market share requires an organization that can process data and get it in the right hands of the right people at the right time.

Especially in the B2B Marketing world, where many marketing, sales, and their customers face unstable work environments, a command and control mindset will help retain the data necessary to fuel the conversations and relationships that occur between humans that buy and sell.

Why link to Amazon if we’re not recommending the book?  Hey, we’re not going to deprive you of your own free choice; and we don’t want to dwell on the negative; moving ahead with a positive attitude towards The Cluetrain Manifesto’s teachings will serve your business well; however, don’t waste your time with the later edition of the book.  Get a copy of  the original for your professional library.  Its content is still very fresh.

What is your experience reading either the original or later edition?

We’re taking a break from a multi-paragraph blog this week, and we’re not going to go on any major Marketing Automation diatribe, but –  If you haven’t been on vacation this summer, you should leave and go on it.  However, you could rest a lot better on the beach if you had already shored up your lead management process and had implemented a marketing automation system to help with your lead nurturing and scoring.  While you were away, leads could be building up qualification for engagement by sales.  Coming back to a sales force that is confident with the leads you are submitting to them would almost be as good as the vacation itself and make it that much easier to go back to work.

Promise us you’ll do it by next summer if not sooner (Florida is a lot nicer in the wintertime!)  Just  a thought…

US Navy Blue Angels

Last week, this blog listed some of the challenges that a B2B Marketing organization faces for Sales and Marketing Alignment.  Aligning those departments is not that easy so you’re not getting off the hook just yet.  This week there are five more to think about and have some comfort in knowing that your organization is not the only one that needs to go through such an exercise for understanding the following:

1.  Sales and Marketing must craft multiple value propositions for multiple customer segments. Additionally, customer-facing Sales and Marketing staff must be trained to communicate them properly.  In most organizations, there is confusion about a value proposition, especially for relatively young organizations with few customers.  As an organization grows its customer base, it needs to understand the nuances in value that each vertical derives from the product or services offered. Both Marketing and Sales should really sit down with customers together to hear the stories on how their products and services are being used or even why certain feature sets are being ignored.  By doing so, they will better understand the organizational and personal benefits that the customer experiences.  Then, back at the office, Marketing and Sales can work on “institutionalizing” the stories into coherent value propositions, and work on weaving them into content, scripts and stories.

2.   Sales and Marketing frequently differ on the most appropriate tactics  and metrics for building a customer base. Sales has always looked upon itself as “a numbers game,” so is concerned with stuffing its pipeline as much as possible in the hopes of statistically having enough leads that buy and hence help achieve revenue objectives; yet at the same time want quality leads from Marketing.  Marketing, on the other hand, may want to work with sales but also feels obliged to do things like “protect the brand,” over-analyze activity in their competitive environment, and focus too much on existing customers, not new ones.  Marketing may think a cool looking website relaunch that wins awards or a large Twitter following is a sign of success, but Sales may not value that exercise if there are not new, qualified leads coming in as a result of the relaunch.  Metrics & measurement are extremely important because Marketing and Sales need to both realize what activities directly impact revenue and which do not; there both departments must be agree upon what to measure.

3.  Sales and Marketing do not really know how customers buy. Organizationally speaking, Sales and Marketing departments themselves buy few products and services; other departments do that for them.  While some individuals on the sales team may have had training from previous jobs, it doesn’t do much good for the organization if both departments as a whole do not know how to systematically diagnose a buying center and apply a sales methodology to it.  With all of the current emphasis on content marketing, if Marketers do not understand personas and the phases of a buying cycle, they will not be able to create effective content for Sales to use.    Both departments need to invest in training such as that which Miller Heiman offers, so as they attempt to align, that alignment will assuredly be customer-centric.

4.  The C-level suite does not require consolidated reporting. Many executives are not aware of the dashboard capabilities of either Marketing Automation or CRM systems, and may not know how both may be integrated.  It is critical that executive buy-in occurs for any alignment efforts, and by showing how an aligned organization can utilize web-based technologies for accurate, almost real-time reporting of pipeline activity, executives will most likely want such a window.  Sales and Marketing should take the initiative of producing consolidated reports, rather than waiting for the boardroom to demand it.

5.  Sales tries to minimize customer interaction while going for the sale, and Marketing may avoid customer interaction altogether.  This is a variation of last week’s point #3.   Is this the culture of your organization? – Many Sales organizations try to bring in deals as quickly and painlessly as possible – we refer to this as “low hanging fruit.”  Eventually the low hanging fruit disappears and you need to “stretch” your reach to grab other ripe fruit.  That can involve a ladder, and Marketing isn’t even in the orchard to hold the ladder.  So instead of creating engagements with prospects, marketing avoids them.  Marketing needs to be there with sales,  holding the ladder if not climbing the other side to help reach for the fruit.  As salespeople are trained to communicate with and listen to customers, so too must Marketing be trained.  Marketing may hear things that Sales does not during a customer interaction, and vice versa, thus triangulating a better idea of what makes the customer tick.  And Sales cannot afford to be too protective of its existing customers – it must allow Marketing access to them and encourage team discussions to find out what is important to the customer.

More and more organizations are realizing that the talent and resources of Marketing need to be “reeled in” to support sales.  While “branding” is important, remember this:  A brand is merely the promise of an experience.  In order to experience the brand, one must generally purchase the product or service of the brand.  In order to purchase the product or service of the brand, you need to provide a selling channel.  A selling channel needs support.  Capische?

Sales has a quantifiable objective: Revenue.  One either achieves/surpasses it or one does not. The way to achieve/surpass a revenue objective with the highest probability of success is to align appropriate organizational resources, most notably in Marketing and Sales.  The coordination of these resources is known as Marketing and Sales Alignment.  And for the most part, Marketing needs to learn to paddle in the same direction as Sales, sometimes warning them where the rocks, eddies, and rapids are.  There are some fundamental challenges in attaining alignment:

1.   A classic challenge is overcoming Sales’ attitude towards Marketing. Salespeople are notorious for claiming that the leads produced by Marketing are useless.   To overcome this, Marketing needs to spend time with sales during prospect conversations – whether it be in an inside sales bullpen or out in the field.  And at the tactical level, Sales and Marketing need to barricade themselves in a conference room, roll up their sleeve, and work together to define what a “sales ready” lead is – The solution: A) Have marketing spend a day in the field with salespeople, and B) spend an hour clearly defining what a lead is.  A framework for this is the “BANT” concept – BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe.  It is possible to create an online dialog with prospects while they are looking for information that enables them to disclose to you where they fit within the continuum of BANT criteria that Marketing and Sales have delineated.  This can also include geography, industry, infrastructure requirements, and other factors that translate into a “sweet spot” that your product or service addresss.   By understanding what sales is trying to find out in the trenches, Marketing will have earned more confidence from Sales and the leads should increase in quality.

2.  Another problematic attitude is held be Marketing people who assume that they know more than the Sales team. Once again, it takes a cooperative initiative, this time on the Sales side, to show Marketing the reality of sales dynamics.  Sales needs to educate Marketing on the nuances in the “buying center” – does a customer have a centralized or decentralized buying organization?  Are they RFP driven?  What are their past or current relationships with competitors? What are the company, departmental and even individual drivers that make a difference in a sale versus a lost sale?  What are the strategic and/or “political” circumstances that must be ti-toed around?  If Marketing thinks it knows the answer to those and other questions, is it sharing that information with Sales?

3.  Salespeople try to eliminate prolonging the pre-sales relationship with a prospect.  Marketing people will tend to lengthen that relationship with the positive intent on strengthening it and building trust.  Salespeople want to close a deal as soon as possible and move on.  Marketing attempts to shower prospects with clever ways to remember their service or product.  Both Marketing and Sales need to collaborate to craft value proposition to communicate to prospects on how good the relationship can be once they have bought the product or service and are achieving success with it.  Post sales programs for driving customer success are critical, especially with newer technologies that meet resistance in adoption.  Marketing needs to coordinate with both Sales and the Customer Service department in order to create tutorials, user groups, feedback mechanisms, etc. that foster the “brand fanatics” or “brand ambassadors” that we hear about as needed in today’s online marketing ecosystem.

4.  Sales and marketing have structural barriers in place. Legacy organizational culture and structure can unwittingly sabotage new efforts.  Many Marketing departments still don’t have MBOs tied to company sales performance.  Product marketers may create bundles or new products for Sales to sell, only to find out that the effort/commission ratio is too great and Salespeople rely on selling the older or unbundled product because they perceive they’re compensated better – in other words, Sales will go for the “low hanging fruit” because they’re under a monthly pressure and will not prioritize strategic necessities that are not in line with tactical reality.

5.  Both departments may have staffing fluidity and other issues. Marketing is generally looked upon as overhead and is centralized in nature, and Sales, depending on whether it is inside or outside can be either centralized or decentralized.  Nevertheless, turnover in Marketing at leadership levels, which tends to feel “understaffed,” and normal turnover in Sales management also prevent long term collaboration as departments organize, re-organize, lay-off and tend to their respective Maslow-like organizational needs.  Once again, however, Marketing must realize its vulnerability and take the initiative to create an institutionalized bond with Sales that weathers a “revolving door” storm.  Part of this effort would include the systematic automation of processes that consolidate and warehouse data to be used over time by a steadily changing workforce.   Otherwise, excessive turnover can cause irreparable harm to an organization as Marketing and Sales try to reinvent the wheel and recover lost information about customers and prospect relationships every time a critical person leaves the firm.

Overcoming these challenges doesn’t mean Marketing is subservient to sales.  Marketing needs to exert leadership and work with Sales a partner in this endeavor.  Otherwise the organization risks not moving forward toward its growth objectives.

Day 2

The second day of LeadsCon was interesting than the first day – and it appeared that more people were in the audience too.

During a session called “The Billion Dollar Business?”, panelist Brett Markinson, Co-Founder and Chairman of HauteLook, Inc., spoke of natural language bots that would help qualify individuals for conversion; but the best session of the entire conference, from a B2B perspective, was titled “How to Contact: Man vs. Machine.”Ken Krogue, President and Co-Founder of InsideSales.com, explained the results of an interesting research project his company commissioned MIT to conduct analysis of B2B and B2C multimedia response time effectiveness. InsideSales.com is a leading telephony-based lead management application with a robust callback solution that integrates with Salesforce.com.   The Marketing Consigliere thinks this is a good read, along with some of the other research papers that InsideSales.com has provided.

Dennis Crowley (@dens), CEO and Co-Founder of the hot location-based app foursquare, was a surprise guest on the abovementioned panel.  Afterwards, the Marketing Consigliere asked him if there were any good uses by B2B organizations of foursquare, and he basically said that foursquare wasn’t thinking about that just yet and was focused on the B2C side.  (Somehow, somewhere, The Marketing Consigliere hopes that a B2B firm will figure out how to really crack the foursquare code…)

Irv Shapiro (@irvshapiro), CEO of Ifbyphone, indicated that phone selling was growing at a 15% rate as compared to face-to-face selling.  His company helps businesses reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction by automating call handling and management with solutions for outbound notifications, call tracking and analytics, voice self-service and virtual call centers.

The Marketing Consigliere met Mani Iyer (@iyermani), Founder and CEO of Kwanzoo, which helps marketers quickly create interactive, content driven campaigns.  While Kwanzoo is clearly for B2C, there is no reason why the app cannot be used for B2B marketing purposes.

Regarding the exhibitors, clearly this was the world of hard driven, quick transaction, quickly close B2C marketers.  Most vendors spoke about leads for home mortgages, credit advice, health insurance, and higher education.  Like yesterday’s dismal showing of hands by drip marketers, there was no substantial talk of nurturing or scoring in the same context as a B2B marketer would.  One shining light on the floor was the TARGUSinfo booth.  Stephanie Richman, their Director of Operations and Account Management, explained to The Marketing Consigliere that her company has a solution for companies needing to validate and qualify a B2B lead visiting their website, providing verification such as if who owns the domain from which someone is visiting, and Hoovers-like information to help guide a marketer or sales person as to the veracity of the lead.

Incidently, TARGUSinfo uses Marketo as their marketing automation platform, so it is pleasing to see that even though the crowd was about lead generation and not about lead management in the B2B sense, at least one of the vendors present “got it.”

Well, while this was an interesting glimpse into the B2C world and there were some points of light for the B2B Marketer, The Marketing Consigliere is glad that he had other business in New York and did not make the trip just for this event – while inexpensive, it was not a content-rich environment for B2B Marketers who have to generated leads, and then nurture and score them for handoff to sales.

Jep, (@jepc), you were indeed smart in avoiding this event, especially given your west coast location.   And any other reader of this blog would be wise to stick to lead generation and management events that are strictly for B2B and sponsored by the marketing automation vendors.

And now The Marketing Consigliere is going to treat himself to some of that New York pizza…

Day 1

Yesterday, The Marketing Consigliere asked What will LeadsCon Offer Marketing Automaters? Over 1,000 filled the conference room for the initial sessions.  Jay Weintraub (@jayweintraub), an organizer of the event, kept a good tight schedule of some impressive panelists.  This was a different world for The Marketing Consigliere, who primarily advises in B2B Marketing world.  The event was focused towards the B2C marketing world, where a pay-per-click and CPM frame of mind tend to dominate.  Of interesting note:

Sean Cheyney (@scheyney), VP of Marketing & Business Development of AccuQuote, on the first panel titled “Old vs. New: Display Media Battle Royal,” basically said that CPMs don’t matter; what matters in advertising is ROI.  Cheaper CPMs that don’t perform are more expensive than higher priced CPMs that do.  Agreed.

During the second panel, “Don’t Call it Lead Gen – Brands and CPL,” Zephrin Lasker, CEO & Co-Founder of Pontiflex, asked the audience who engaged in drip marketing.  Of the approximately 1,000+ attendees, only three hands were raised in answer to that question, and the others looked puzzled.  The Marketing Consigliere had to shake his head.  Clearly drip marketing has a place in the B2C campaign management world, but in the cut-throat arena of B2C lead generation, apparently even the most data-intensive firms are overlooking an excellent practice. Joe Caccavano, (@joecacc) VP of Emerging Technologies at Ferrara & Company, a consumer packaged goods agency, stated during a discussion of social media that an email opt-in was better than a “like.”

On a humorous note, by the “end of the day,” the phrase “at the end of the day” had been used by the 22 panelists and moderators on the seven panels for a total of eight times, or almost once per three speakers… and upon leaving the lively cocktail party hosted by Acxiom and All Web Leads, The Marketing Consigliere took a great 2-mile walk back to Grand Central Station during the beautiful late July evening.  No pizza was consumed yet.

The Marketing Consigliere loves New York pizza and will find any excuse to go get some.  What better excuse than this year’s LeadsCon? Smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, LeadsCon, like a hot fresh pizza straight out of the oven, will offer much to chew on and digest.

Jep Castelein (@jepc) of LeadSloth had indicated that he would not be attending since he was concentrating on lead nurturing and lead scoring as opposed to lead generation.  Was he being smart in not attending?

Stay tuned for a review once the Marketing Consigliere has sat in on some sessions and made a round of the exhibitor floor…

This is the third anniversary of this blog.  Similar milestones were previously acknowledged in 2009 and 2008 with much joy and pasta, but this year is extra special.  Although it is still referred to as “The Marketing Consigliere” Blog, and written in the third person narrative, it is undergoing change as it figures out what kind of Marketing blog it wants to be when it grows up.

Earlier this spring the blog moved from its own domain to be under the Allinio brand.  The whole site migrated to WordPress 3.0 when it was still beta.  Some plugins were trashed, others were added, like the WP Touch, which formats this site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.  Book reviews have been a little more frequent, and the “Cinque Domande” (Five Questions) for startup executives has struggled because it’s hard for both the interviewer and interviewee to find the time to conduct the interviews. RSS feeds have climbed, retweets of articles have risen, inbound likes have increased…and the blogging has always been fun, even if tedious.   The Marketing Consigliere is pleased at all this yet humbled that people are beginning to realize that he hasn’t been drinking to much vino… The journey so far started with a blogpost written with both passion and frustration – passion for a rising mindset in which to conduct Marketing, notably B2B Marketing, and frustration because so many companies were no where near being enlightened.

Blogging takes a lot of energy and not while weeks have gone by without a new post, a month never has.  But this year has been very special because of the changes in the blog and the rising awareness of Marketing Automation, metrics & measurement, and what The Marketing Consigliere has always called “Net-Centric Marketing” or “C4ISR Marketing.” He used this phrase to describe a new way of thinking for marketers, who need to quickly pass data to the appropriate stakeholders to ensure maximized revenue for the organization.

Over the course of the year, he has learned from many great professionals and is honored to be part of great social media, B2B, and Marketing Automation circles and their ongoing conversations.  So now in his fourth year of blogging, The Marketing Conisigliere looks forward to continuing to help organizations make  the transformational journey to be better online marketers…

Tech startups are generally innovators.  But whether bootstrapped or venture funded, they are burning cash and have significant milestones to meet in order to get to the next level – namely, increasing sales.  The irony of many startups, even ones that are selling disruptive technologies, is that many rely on the same old ways of marketing and sales that existed before the Internet came along, or the ones that are Internet-based yet don’t go far enough.

The Marketing Consigliere would like to give you some reasons why those engaged in entrepreneurship need to start from the ground up, before they even have a website, with marketing automation for their company:

1.  Marketing Automation forces you to focus on processes.  Chances are you have adopted some methodology for product development such as the Agile method. Once you think about it, “leads” are a product that you create for yourself, nurturing them over time if they’re not quite ready for your salespeople.  You need to determine the processes that will help you gather, store, analyze, share, and act upon data that in the form of leads that will lead eventually translate into revenue.  This disciplined approach will help you make the best out of the data you accumulate over time.  Once you have done this, other processes like operations or customer support related activities will be easier to create because you will already have experience mapping out workflows and institutionalizing them.

2. You can’t just rely on “viral marketing.” During the dotcom era, many startups looking for money would say that “all we need do is to capture X% of the market” (with the “X” being one percent or a fraction of one percent).  How naïve – that may be a goal, but stating the goal is not saying how you’ll get to that goal.  In the eyes of investors, that was a deal killer.  Now The Marketing Consigliere has heard would-be CEOs say they will get to market by “word of mouth” and viral use of social media.  Once again, how naïve.  That’s just a corollary of thinking that your product is so wonderful it will sell itself.  You are going to have to test many channels of communication with whom you think your customers are and within those channels test multiple permutations of creative and copy.  Marketing Automation can help you do that so efficiently, allowing you to determine what works best and and then enabling you to repeat it while eliminating those trials that do not bring you adequate conversions.

3. You’re not ready for a CRM platform. While Salesforce.com is a great tool and opensource CRM platforms like SugarCRM are indeed useful and generally affordable for sales organizations, don’t forget that the “C” stands for “customer,” of which you don’t have any just yet.  Marketing Automation provides you with the platform for generating, nurturing, and scoring leads.  When a lead is truly ready to engage with a sales person or quickly become a customer, then you can worry about integrating a marketing automation platform with a CRM platform, (from what The Marketing Consigliere has seen, Silverpop, Pardot, Marketo, and Eloqua have very robust synchronization/integration with most leading CRM platforms) which in turn can be integrated with the back office applications that are relevant to a customer when they are actually using your product or service.  So don’t feel like you have to rush out and subscribe to a CRM platform just yet; and whatever you do, don’t embarass yourself in front of a potential investor and tell them you’ve bought PC fossils like ACT! and Goldmine. The Marketing Automation platform may be the horse that comes before the CRM cart.

4.  A cool website alone is insufficient. It doesn’t matter if you’ve made your website in Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, or whatever CMS du jour you happen to be a fan of.  Hopefully you haven’t even thought of launching a website until you’ve figured out how your startup is going to be found on the Internet, and how you are going convert leads into customers.  Refer back to reason #1 which is about processes.  That’s where the concept of “Inbound Marketing” comes in.  You really don’t know online customer behavior in the context of your industry/vertical and will have to conduct test upon test to see what content attracts and engages potential customers.  Proper campaign management demands this.  Furthermore, marketers are realizing that content is the sticky stuff that helps weave a huge web covering the many places your prospects will be in the Internet (pun intended).  There are vendors like HubSpot, Infusionsoft, and Genoo that are creating true, very economical Inbound Marketing platforms which include websites for small businesses and can make a significant impact on how you use metrics & measurement on your lead generation and management efforts.  Instead of just having a website, you need to truly create a “web” of your own and Marketing Automation will help you determine where to place the “strings” of your web.  After all, customers visit many places online in various fashions, and you need to be able to take advantage of that.

5. Most salespeople can’t prospect well. How many times have you downloaded a whitepaper, and not have had the time figure out when you were going to read the darn thing when you get a call from a salesperson asking if you read it?  As a startup, you cannot afford to have costly salespeople running down too many dead ends.  Even if you think that “this is a numbers game,”  you simply don’t have enough salespeople to cover your market.  Outbound cold calls are as inefficient as buggy whips are obsolete.  You need to determine, over time, the right “Digital Body Language” because one instance of engagement with a visitor to your website is no indicator of proclivity to buy – over time, however, you can be a better predictor to that.  Allowing a salesperson to have a knee-jerk reaction and rabidly call an unqualified visitor is like flushing money down the tubes. And sometimes salespeople don’t ask the right questions about a buying organization that can help determine the true qualifications of a particular person.    Marketing Automation allows you to process hundreds of activities and then gives the salesperson a lead that has been qualified and less likely to waste their limited time.   And not to be too harsh, it’s not always the salesperson’s fault – from another angle, Salespeople which are more expensive to employ on a cost per lead basis can be inserted in to the lead process after the Marketing Automation portion of lead management has done all it can do.

6. Most salespeople have less-than-stellar contacts. If you think you’re going to make a shortcut to your goal by hiring a stable of salespeople with “fat rolodexes” (ugh, what an antiquated concept), The Marketing Consigliere thinks whoever sold you that stuff you’re smoking mixed in a little oregano with it.  Many salespeople are not going to risk their relationships once they realize how hard it is to sell your wonderful product without the support of great marketing tools.  Marketing Automation-enabled “drip marketing” tactics will do a better job warming up a greater number of prospects to your company than someone who may have exaggerated about how many people they know well.  By the time you actually found a “perfect” salesperson with the pedigreed contacts you’re looking for, you could have set up a Marketing Automation platform that will still be working for you long after that salesperson has come and left your startup and you are again looking for a salesperson with a “fat rolodex.”

7.  ”Free” isn’t as good as you think it is. There’s nothing wrong with trying to optimize your efficiencies as you try to grow by using free services such as Google Analytics;  but remember the adage “You get what you pay for.”  As an entrepreneur, you understand risk and tradeoffs.  The risk of a free tool or service is that you won’t get the support you need when something goes wrong; and things frequently go wrong in a startup environment.   And there is no free tool that is as comprehensive as some of the leading solutions out there that give you turnkey Marketing Automation capabilities.   Besides, The Marketing Consigliere assumes that you are not going to give your product or service away for free; why should your business plan depend on things that are “free?”  Have you taken into consider the externalities of using free?  ”Free” also means a steep, long learning curve.  Marketing Automation platforms have been created by companies that “eat their own dog food” and are ready to support with their expertise if you if you pay for their services.  Monthly fees range from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars if you do it yourself; hiring professional services firms that specialize in Marketing Automation (like Allinio - [shameless plug]), may add additional hourly fees onto that, but you’ll quickly get past the steep, long learning curve because of it.

8. The data you gather is valuable beyond the scope of your immediate product launch. How you gather, store, analyze, share, and act upon data is important.  Not just for now, but for unimagined opportunities in the future.  Chances are your business direction will change in the first six months, year, and even two years.  That sort of adaptation is healthy.  But the business intelligence gathered via a Marketing Automation platform could possibly help you foresee trends that normally you could not have reckoned.  Ultimately, however, data is a strategic asset that may make your company a more attractive acquisition; acquistion, of course, is something which most entrepreneurs include in their business plan as an desired exit strategy.  A startup which understands and achieves information superiority out of the gate will be better able to survive the bloody arena of capitalism and outlive its competition, drawing top dollar from the smart acquirer who is not only buying a revenue stream of customers, but critical data that can be leveraged in the future.  Marketing Automation helps you achieve such strategic positioning.

The Marketing Consigliere was honored to have lunch with David Rudolph (@davrud) of Eloqua earlier this year and was tickled to see this creation of his on Eloqua’s blog today.  Dave has taken the “Lost Generation” viral video and cleverly applied its upbeat message to our world of Marketing Automation.

Thank you to Eloqua and Dave Rudolph for sharing this!