Stop the Insanity

Albert Einstein's famous quote defines insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

This practice appears to be alive and well in many marketing organizations. WHY??!!

When we ask marketing executives, they tell us it really boils down to not having the tools to confidently change their direction. With the average tenure of CMO's rapidly approaching single-digit months, it's easy to see why many choose to "stay the course" versus heading in a new direction that can result in an even shorter employement period.

The Result: Fear of the unknown breeds sub-optimal business results, which in turn breed more sub-optimal performances.

The Solution: Fact-based decision making. Marketers need to be armed with the facts to make confident and credible decisions that move companies forward in terms of increased revenues, market share and profits. Otherwise, the sales and marketing "growth engine" will be stuck in neutral.

Getting facts is often an arduous endeavor for most marketers. It requires turning data sources that are typically designed for finance and operations teams into usable and valuable intelligence for the marketing organization.

However, this capability is becoming more obtainable through service models that allow you to outsource your data mining, modeling and reporting needs so you can focus on making confident marketing decisions and driving new initiatives that truly improve company performance. These solutions are much more cost-effective than in-house systems and can often be deployed immediately.

So get out of the marketing rut and position yourself and your team to lead with confidence.

- Read Ziegler is the founder, President & CEO of Vantedge Group