Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

How to Prioritize Marketing Investments Using the Demand Maturity Matrix

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Explaining how you are spending your marketing dollars is a challenge that all heads of marketing face. Cynics in your company are always happy to point out a failed program, which tars all your demand efforts with the same brush. What to do? Counterintuitive as it may seem, start by pointing out your failures. Here’s how. Many marketing teams make the mistake of lumping all of their demand generation programs together. So all people hear about is the total number of leads delivered to sales. … [Read more...]

Four Mistakes (Bad) Presenters Make

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I was at a conference in San Francisco last week. It was at the of-the-moment MidMa event space known as The Village. A massive video screen – hundreds of feet wide and nearly floor to ceiling – covers the entire back wall, adding to the feel of electricity. The setting demands dramatic presentations. Then came the first presenter. And the second. And the third. In the span of just two hours, I saw three smart people make all four of the mistakes I’m going to cover below. And the gaffes just … [Read more...]

Market Like You Are an Investor – Why Changing Your Mindset Will Rocket Your Career

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A CMO can get stuck in their own marketing world. As a head of marketing myself, I have occasionally fallen into what I call marketing tunnel vision. The condition has three symptoms: it complicates communications with other executives, especially your CEO; it distracts CMOs from the bigger picture of the business; and it perpetuates the stereotype that marketers are lightweight business people. It doesn’t have to be this way. I have the cure, and it’s as simple as changing your mindset – to … [Read more...]

How De-positioning Works: Dissecting a Shane Co. Radio Ad

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Positioning – how your product is perceived in the mind of your buyer – is critical for any marketing organization. Creating a positioning statement is an essential skill for marketers to master. In crowded markets, where the capacity of a buyer’s mind is already filled with competitors, another key concept is critical – de-positioning. I came across a great example recently, which I’m going to dissect to illustrate the concept. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, as I do, you know Tom … [Read more...]

Four First Steps to Make Your Marketing Authentic

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Authenticity. Everyone wants it. Nobody wants anything inauthentic. Fake. Substitute. Artificial. Ersatz. Even though it's intuitive, too many marketers ignore this basic desire and put out advertisements and campaigns that come across as phony. Marketing needs to be authentic. Marketers need to understand that their customers want something real and deliver it to them in every way – in the product, in the promotion, and in their language. No customer wants to be sold. Or on the receiving end … [Read more...]