dumb, data-driven, decisions, Toby Elwin, blog

Dumb, data-driven marketing decisions

Dumb, data-driven decisions happen when numbers have no context and people have no confidence. Who? How? and So now what? improve the odds.

When innumerates run the asylum, you, your customers, and your business miss context and transparency to interpret intent.

elmer fudd, daffy duck, bugs bunny, communication, Toby Elwin, blog

Subjective communication objective

Successful communication inspires action and is clear to others what needs to happen to meet that objective.

All communication faces daunting odds to reach each person, intention intact. Perception, bias, and noise lay between intent, action, and reaction.

To succeed in the communication obstacle course against intent, you need to make clear how to make it happen.

IBM1620A, reengineering, marketing, Toby Elwin, blog

Reengineering marketing

New conditions demand new business management strategy. Technology enabled a disruption greater than any department or team level at a company can solve.

Customers severed the business message and took control of marketing channels.

Media lost privilege, marketers lost their minds, business lost their playbook, and customer’s rewrote the rules of engagement.

We need to reengineer marketing from the outside in and then align people, process, and technology from the inside out.

one flew over the cuckoo's nest, project management, Toby Elwin, blog

Portfolio project management — seeing not perceiving

Bias derails evidence for perception and perceiving is most certainly not seeing.

Bias is both a decision shortcut as well as a communication wall.

Portfolio planning, from finance disciplines, presents projects as financial portfolio option mix to meet organization strategy. Project communication deserves risk and return criteria to project a financial portfolio, not bias.

marketing, inbound, checklist, template, cta, keyword, social media

Inbound campaign project checklist – Excel

An inbound marketing campaign is a project that requires multiple points of interaction from concept, strategy, design, art, content and copy creation, and optimization to publishing, analysis, and campaign and lead nurture.

Where many of us might keep all the campaign components in their head, I sought to help manage this with a repeatable, scalable tool that helps all inbound project stakeholders manage, deliver, and analyze a strategic campaign.

This checklist lends order to the stakeholder and subject matter expert sign up, sign on, and sign off.

Fortune 500, revenue, Toby Elwin, Bob Dylan

Fortune 500 revenue here, won’t get you there

The speed and pace of change demands business act, respond, and accomplish so much more, with so much less. HubSpot CEO, Brian Halligan, presents the following:

> In 1983, of the 1,000, largest American companies, by 1993, 811 remained
> In 2003, of the 1,000 largest American companies, by 2013, 243 remained

That change happens is constant reality. Now constant change accelerates the decade of decay. Demand for new revenue demands new business models and human capital competency.

In 2010 I wrote a post on Fortune 500 turnover, that simple math called almost 50%. What if the period took too much hit from the dot com bubble to provide a good source, in this post I revisit those numbers and look at 2013 and 2014 Fortune 500 numbers as well.

sharepoint, eric rhodes, jay hajj, Toby Elwin, blog

The project management SharePoint

Projects that understand what existed and what exists are both efficient and effective.

SharePoint has an incredibly rich out-of-the-box capability, but too many times the project team does not know what is capable with SharePoint.

With these self-paced, training links provide an overview of what could be to collaborate, search, publish, and file.

Project portals need to meet user objective, not IT administrator needs. More people should reject the SharePoint designer, not the SharePoint capability.

2015, social media, lanscape, Toby Elwin, blog

Fast Start — Social Media Landscape 2015

The CMO 2015 Social Landscape partnered with Aberdeen Group to create a new chart and new evaluation criteria.

New social sites since arrive all the time, did your organization invest in Pinterest? Google+?

They might be an easy, what of Qzone? Plurk? or KakauTalk?

Now with Aberdeen Group research links you can find out what the heck to allot the VK budget.

led zeppelin, project management, hindenburg, Toby Elwin, blog

A Led Zeppelin page of project management

Time impacts a project business need. How a project team identifies the impact decides if time is a resource waste or resource investment.

Before you sink costs into a project and well before your project looks more like sunk costs invest time for a better appreciation.

A review of what was, what is, and what should never be, is critical to identify risk to resource commitment.

Take a page from Led Zeppelin, who borrowed heavily from others, at times, without acknowledgment, to create something grand from what was tried.