“What’s the ask?” An old marketing/sales term referring to, “what are you asking your audience to do,” is critical in moving prospects and leads to action. While calls-to-action (CTAs) are important in almost all aspects of marketing and communications, today they’re nowhere more prevalent than online.

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” wrote John Wanamaker, 1838 – 1922. After more than 30 years in the industry, and like Mr. Wanamaker before me, I’ve seen a lot of marketing strategies gone wrong and a lot of advertising dollars wasted. Today, we have the technology we need to “close the loop” between marketing and revenue, but few are actually taking advantage of it.

When it comes to the arranged marriage of sales and marketing, a shotgun wedding might be better than a long engagement.

The concept of demand generation through marketing automation may sound complex, but in reality, the concept is simple: Don’t sell when you’re ready to sell. Sell when your prospect is ready to buy. 

On the heels of my last post about using surveys to ask email recipients why they are not opening your emails, I came across a blog post from Marketo that made me think about how to leverage interactive content to engage prospects.  According to blog’s author,  Seth Lieberman, he notes the interaction between users and interactive content—i.e. meaning content that leads to an exchange of information—results in impressive interaction rates: