How to Repurpose, Refresh, and Reuse Content

By Pam Didner
Former Global Integrated Marketing Strategist
Intel Corporation



I had the opportunity to speak at the Content to Conversion Conference on May 6. It was a great event with a solid agenda touching on content strategy, sales enablement and demand generation. My topic was “Repurpose, Reuse and Refresh (RRR)” and I shared my thoughts on how to make the most of your content.  You can check out the presentation on Slideshare.  As usual, your feedback is appreciated.

Before repurposing, reusing and refreshing your content…

It’s important to answer three questions:

• Who is your audience? –> Persona
• What topics should be used to engage them?  –> Editorial Topics
• What materials should be used to engage them? –> Content

As I mentioned in the post I wrote on how to create a global persona, a good persona provides insights such as pain points, keywords, job description, desires, demographics, attributes, even content format and media consumption preferences. Using the intelligence gathered from your persona research and observation, you and your team can brainstorm on editorial topics that your personas care about that are relevant to your products and services.

Somewhere between original content and curated content…

It’s hard to create original content day in and day out. At the same time, curated content (third party content) may not perform as well as the new material. Somewhere between these two you need to find creative ways to repurpose, reuse and refresh (RRR) existing content.

There are three potential options to RRR:

1. RRR a flagship content to one audience
2. RRR a flagship content to different audiences
3. RRR different pieces of content into a new piece of content

RRR a piece of flagship content to one audience:

RRR content to different audiences:

LinkedIn’s Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide offers a perfect example by creating similar content and using it to target different marketing professionals. Thanks to Jason Miller, Global Content Marketing Manager, for sharing his awesome content RRR examples.

RRR different pieces of content into a new piece of content:

Understand your content landscape, pick and choose different pieces to create another piece of content to share with your audience.

Above are some examples that I shared to repurpose, reuse and refresh your content. The reality is that it’s expensive and time consuming to RRR content. Don’t RRR for the sake of RRR. Give it some thought by evaluating your current content list. Start with promotion and audiences’ needs in mind. Create an RRR plan by starting with 1 or 2 flagship content items or by logically pulling pieces of information from various content pieces.  Happy RRR! I would love to hear your examples of RRR.

'Like Taking Care of a Garden': The Constant Quest for Integrated, Customer-Centric Marketing

An interview with
Andy Burtis
Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications
McKesson Corporation

Interview by Sam Narisi






The best marketing creates value for customers, says Andy Burtis, senior vice president of marketing and communications at McKesson. His organization has tried to move beyond pushing promotional content and become a “convener of stature” and key player in the improvement of healthcare. A key part of that strategy is McKesson’s Better Health Tour, a series of events in different cities designed to facilitate exchanges among experts in the health sector.

Following Andy’s presentation at the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD 2015: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, we spoke with him about the tour and his efforts at McKesson to unite the entire organization under a unified brand message and rallying cry: “For Better Health.”

One of the things you talked about in your presentation is taking charge of how the company is seen rather than letting the market decide, which led to the idea of “For Better Health.” What are some things you’ve done to accomplish that? 

Prior to this effort, each division of the company was very focused on how they wanted the market to perceive their business, but we had not created a unifying big idea that would bring cohesion to how the market would view the corporation as a whole. We decided to take a step back and get very intentional at the master brand level rather than just viewing the way the divisions told our story as the de facto McKesson story.

As we went through our process, we came to appreciate the importance of focusing on our purpose as a business— “why” we exist—versus focusing on “what” we do. You only get so far by explaining your products and services. The best way to build your brand is to stand for something and then communicate that stand through tangible action that leaves an impression with your audience. The Better Health Tour that we’ve been doing is a great example. This initiative brings together a cross-section of healthcare leaders in key cities across North America for strategic conversations that are really about helping our customers achieve a healthier future, as opposed to being about McKesson.

McKesson is a big company with a lot of units. What did it take to get everyone on board across those divisions? 

We engaged leaders from each division in a process of co-creation so they were all involved in formulating and giving birth to the idea. For any large company, it doesn’t go well if something is invented by corporate and imposed on the business units. So we had representatives from all the divisions involved in the creative process, and they really helped us to get to the heart of what is it that we stand for as a business. We also made sure the idea resonated with the CEO and that it became the expression of his own views on why our company exists. He became our chief evangelist and incorporated the idea into his communications to all audiences, including employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and policy makers.

The next important part was engaging our employees and giving them a way to see their own role in helping our customers and the patients they serve achieve better health. We have an internal employee engagement campaign where we photograph employees at every level of the company sharing their own stories and make videos that celebrate the role our employees play. It’s been really important to make sure employees feel a sense of connection and ownership.

Around the same time as the brand transformation, we were overhauling our employee benefits program. So we worked very closely with HR to make sure all of the messaging and program design around that was consistent with our commitment to better health. For example, we have a program that allows employees to earn credits for healthy behavior. So we talked about the way we’re working as a business to bring better health to our customers while at the same time working to bring better health to our own employees. That became a real catalyst for getting people excited about our purpose as a company.

We also created an extremely detailed and comprehensive book of brand guidelines to disseminate to all of the marketing and communications teams across our divisions. Our brand team worked very closely to train all of those teams on the guidelines and consult with them on the implementation.  We’re going through a comprehensive audit right now where we’re planning to meet with all of the marketing VPs in the various divisions and give them a scorecard for how they’re doing. For any items that score below a B, they’ll have to put a correction plan in place. That kind of governance is really important and we’re continuing to work on that.

It can be difficult for organizations to get the content they need with the resources available. Was that a challenge for McKesson?

In the early days, it was a big challenge. At the corporate level we tried to produce defining content that would show the business units what we thought good content looked like—for example, a brand inspiration video that all of the business units could use. We were really focused on quality as opposed to quantity and we were counting on the business units to develop the quantity of content. Our corporate team probably only did 10% of the content, and the divisions were responsible for the rest. That was a positive because it was less expensive and more distributed, but it also created challenges because people will often apply their own filter to the brand, and if you’re not careful, you end up creating a level of diffusion in your brand expression that defeats the purpose.

It seems like that’s where the governance plan you mentioned really comes into play.

It does and I would just emphasize that this is a journey.  I wouldn’t want to suggest that we’ve hung the “Mission Accomplished” flag and we’re done. Taking care of the brand is like taking care of a garden. You plant it, you water it carefully, and it begins to sprout. Then you’ve got weeds and you have to pick them. It’s a never-ending process of tending to the garden and caring for it in an on-going way. That’s the way I look at what we’re doing. We’ve got a really good start to a garden that has tremendous potential. And with the Better Health Tour, we’re now trying to expand the garden beyond our own company.

How did the Better Health Tour come about?

Our view was we have a unique perspective on what better health looks like for the individual players, including pharmacies, physician practices, health plans, hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers and others. We also have a unique perspective on what better health looks like for the ecosystem as a whole. So we thought: Why don’t we convene these healthcare leaders in different cities for a strategic conversation about how we, as an ecosystem, can work together more effectively? We’ve done Portland, the Twin Cities, and Boston, and we’re going to Toronto at the end of October.

The tour is a full day event where we try to bring together senior level influencers from across the care delivery system, including public health officials, administrators, clinicians, etc. We talk about the current state of health in that particular region and start to figure out the greatest opportunities for the players to build a healthier business ecosystem and create better population health in the region.

From a marketing perspective, what effects have you seen? 

We’ve seen a significant uptick in media impressions, which has been terrific for us. We’ve also seen a significant increase in social media activity. We have a LinkedIn group related to the tour where we continue the conversation after visiting a city. We’ve also seen the door open to a lot of terrific new business relationships. As we go through these summits, attendees come away with a much-expanded view of McKesson and we pepper these events with our clinical and business thought leaders. More often than not, through the conversations that take place, new connections will be formed that lead to expanded opportunities for us.

What do you have planned for the tour in the future?

Our goal really is to scale this initiative and take it to many more cities. We’re still working through the proposal to do that. Our hope is that, if we can run these strategic summits around the globe, we will be in a position to function as a knowledge broker between cities and stakeholders across borders. We want to be at the center of facilitating that worldwide knowledge exchange, all in the name of Better Health. Nothing could be better from a brand and business development perspective.

7 Critical Elements of a Successful Integrated Marketing Strategy

By Sam Narisi
Publications Editor/Lead Writer
Integrated Marketing Solutions
Frost & Sullivan




New marketing channels are appearing all the time, thanks to social media outlets and other digital platforms. At the same time, traditional outreach methods such as physical ads still have a big impact.

The growing number of choices gives marketers plenty of ways to reach their target audience. However, it also leaves the door wide open to one of the biggest problems in marketing today: fragmentation.

To make a lasting impact, marketing needs to communicate a consistent message to customers at every point of interaction. But with so many marketing channels, it’s easy to lose control.

To keep communications consistent and prevent fragmentation, here are seven key elements to keep in mind when developing your integrated marketing strategy:

1. Planning

To make sure all channels and communication methods are integrated, you have to start at the beginning.

Start by defining the campaign and its goals, said Frost & Sullivan’s Gary Robbins and Lauren Jaeger during a session at the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange in Boston. Figure out your company’s identity and the message you want to send, as well who you want to send it to.

2. Buying cycle

Integration isn’t just about making sure different marketing campaigns use similar language or have the same taglines or design schemes. It’s about the sending the same message to customers throughout their entire journey with your company.

Make sure you consider the entire buying cycle when planning your integrated marketing strategy – including brand awareness, consideration, credibility, and final evaluation. While different types of content will be used depending on which phase the buyer is in, the core message needs to be consistent.

3. Your audience

Really successful integrated marketing happens when companies are able to look at themselves from the customer’s point of view and see if that view is consistent with the message the company is trying to convey. Doing that requires a full understand of your audience and its different segments.

Many companies have taken up the strategy of developing buyer personas for the different types of customers they’re trying to reach. Key factors to consider when defining those personas include title, industry, level of decision-making power, needs and concerns, and preferred communication channels.

4. People

Customers don’t just interact with your company via the marketing collateral that you deliver to them. They’re also likely to speak with a salesperson during the process, or with support staff at some point after they make a purchase.

The message delivered in those person-to-person interactions must also be consistent with marketing communications. To achieve that, marketers will have to work with other teams such as sales, customer support, and others that deal with customers.

5. Content

Content is king in today’s marketing landscape, as buyers have greater knowledge and access to more information than ever. Buyers have already done their research before they contact companies, so marketers need to make sure they’re putting out the kinds of content that resonate with the target audience.

The key – and one of the biggest challenges – is making sure all of those pieces of content deliver a consistent message. Robbins and Jaeger recommended a rubric for developing content that is “ALRITE”:

• Audience: Who, specifically, does each marketing asset target?

• Longevity: What is the shelf-life, or long-term value, of this asset?

• Resources: How will the asset be produced and who will be delegated to execute? 

• Integration: How will this asset integrate with the rest of our marketing campaign?

• Timing: When is the best time for this asset to be launched?

• Evaluation: How will we measure the performance of this particular asset?

6. Technology

Technology plays a role in almost every aspect of marketing these days, from analyzing data and conducting to research to publishing content and tracking the success of campaigns. However, it’s important to use technology wisely, warned Dell’s Monique Bonner during her keynote speech at MARKETING WORLD 2014.

With so much technology available, marketers sometimes act like kids who are excited to play with a bunch of new toys, she said. It’s important to start by defining the goals and then figuring out what technology will help the company get there, rather than the other way around.

7. Measurement

As any marketer knows, the work isn’t done once a campaign is rolled out. You need to track results so you can do better next time – and, ideally, make changes in real time based on the results.
Again, it comes back to the planning. Before implementing a strategy, the company needs to know what key performance indicators need to be looked at and how that data will be tracked. The goal should always be continuous improvement, with a focus on viewing the company from the customer’s point of view.

About the Author:

Sam Narisi is the Publications Editor for Frost & Sullivan’s Integrated Marketing Solutions Practice, which helps companies innovate and deliver original marketing programs for every stage of the buying process.  For more information and insight, visit Frost & Sullivan’s IMS Knowledge Center.  For details on Frost & Sullivan's Integrated Marketing Solutions Practice, contact us today.

Top 10 Take-Aways from the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange

By Nicole Coons
Marketing Vanguard/Principal Consultant
Integrated Marketing Solutions
Frost & Sullivan

Marketing leaders from around the globe recently convened at the Boston, MA, Copley Plaza for the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, excited to discuss their day-to-day issues and solutions and strategies for meeting the new demands being placed on them and their teams.

During this three-day marketing think tank, participants asked each other questions like “How are you showing an ROI in your content marketing?” and “How are you engaging audiences across differing segments using social media?” Marketers also benefited from presentations delivered by marketing leaders who shared their stories of transformed brands, cultures and products, as well as marketing’s role in creating and sustaining value for customers.

If we had to pick one word that encapsulates this year’s theme of “how to stay connected and engaged with your empowered customer”, it would be Innovation. Innovation is finding a better way of doing something. For marketers, that means finding better ways to create value in the eyes of the customer.

Keynote speaker Stephen Liguori, former Executive Director, Global Innovation & New Models at GE, made a strong case for innovation as the marketer’s fundamental role. He distinguished innovation from invention in that innovation is “the process of translating an idea (the invention) into a good or service that creates value for which customers will pay.”  He went further to say that marketing’s emerging new role is to lead innovation because it’s the marketers who bring the voice of the customer to the table. He summarized his point “It’s the value of the innovation that determines success or failure…if you focus on the value of innovation, you can build a successful career.” Stated by another keynote, Andy Burtis of McKesson, marketing itself is now the value-creating product.

Participants at MARKETING WORLD 2014 came away with a number of lessons that will help them create more value in their marketing and deepen connections with their empowered customers. Here’s our take on the top 10. If you were at this year’s event, please share your top take-aways in the comments below.

Top 10 ways to create more value for your customers through marketing

1) Check your brand. Social media is definitely the topic du jour. But the advice that got heads nodding was this: don’t attempt anything in social media until you’ve got three other essentials right: Your brand, your people and your customer service.

• Make sure your brand is solid. As Jamie DePeau, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer of Lincoln Financial Group stated, “Are you really evolving the way you help and serve, or are you just updating your website and changing your logo?” Keep your marketing engaging by keeping your brand relevant and timely for your targeted audiences. This advice was reiterated throughout the Executive MindXchange.

• Next, care for your people (employees, partners, ecosystem) and ensure they know the value proposition and are motivated to uphold and share your company’s vision. 

• Finally, before entering the world of social media, content personalization and the rest, make sure you have a handle on your customer’s journey once they become a customer. Nothing will kill a new customer’s spirit faster than a bad experience, and social media only increases the speed of negative customer service “wild fires”. 

2) Invest in great talent. Several presenters echoed this advice, including Misty Hathaway from the Mayo Clinic, where the right talent doing the right work helped the organization achieve high visibility and success with its marketing campaigns. Other presenters and participants shared examples where the success of certain social media programs, data analysis, and even product innovation were due to one or two key talented team members. Hiring people who are knowledgeable, skilled and creative in the areas where you need expertise can make all the difference in your marketing program success—implementing new software alone won’t solve everything. Crowd sourcing is yet another way companies are locating great talent to make significant strides in value creation.

3) Map your customer’s journey—all of it.  Over fifty percent of the audience polled during a keynote presentation said they are using journey mapping and personas to develop a picture of their targeted audiences. Furthermore, marketers are urged to consider both the “choosing” and the “using” stages of the customer journey.  Seek to understand how you are viewed by the customer along this journey, and then connect how you serve their needs along that path by looking at your operational processes.

4) Know your customer’s 100 pain points and then focus on the ones that you uniquely solve the best. This was a little nugget that was conveyed by a number of presenters—also coined the “no stone unturned” approach by Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Jessica Jeffcoat. She advises, “Listen before you add to the noise…and be open to the inherent value expressed by your customers. What do they say is most valuable? Then use those exact words as you communicate.”

In conversations about personas and personalization of content, the experts advise that it’s essential to know as much as you can about your target (up to 100 pain points, according to one presenter). Then decide what conversations you want to be a part of—hopefully it’s those where you have the most to give. This action step is also a reminder to marketers that we needn’t be everything to everyone. There’s a chance for a deeper connection with your customer, and hence more value shared, when you choose to focus on serving through what your business does best.

5) Start with just a handful of personas. Many who are just beginning to work with personas wanted to know how many a company should have.  While there was never a magic number deemed to perfectly capture the essence of every customer, two helpful rules of thumb were 1) fewer is better and 2) consider that you have your current personas (those who buy from you today) and your aspirational personas (those markets you want to capture in the future).

6) Check your content for value.  Here are some questions you can ask yourself about your content to see how well it’s adding value. Any one of these attributes will raise the level of your content from a sales pitch to useful content that builds connections with your audience:

• Does it tell a story?
• Is it personal? 
• Is it emotional? 
• Are you wrapping your customer in an integrated experience? 
• Are you speaking to your audience at all points along their decision process? 
• Are you helping them compare? 
• Are you helping them understand why?

7) Get savvy around digital and data. Marketing automation and Big Data were recurring themes, as it’s an area that’s bringing marketing from an art to a science. Data sophistication is increasing the speed and accuracy of decision-making for marketers. As discussed by Ian Cross, Professor, Bentley College and Misty Hathaway from the Mayo Clinic, data is a critical asset that needs to be managed and turned into an opportunity. The next generation of marketers who are data driven and adept at the technical and analytical aspects of working with data will be able to turn findings into monetizing opportunities and things of value.  Once again, it’s not the data itself creating the value, it’s about how well people use it.

8) Invest in some form of marketing automation. Taking the previous point a step further, the fastest way to get savvy around digital and data is to jump in and begin using it. Marketing automation is a rapidly evolving field and the array of choices is dizzying; the fact is that these tools are helping to put marketers back at the table with credibility. Marketing automation tools provide actionable insights and tools for measuring ROI. Look for tools that are flexible and offer scalability.

9) Ensure you are mobile-ready. According to Matthew Donegan-Ryan, Director of Mobile Strategy at Cvent, the average person checks their smart phone 150 times a day. That translates to about once every six minutes.  The average user has 65 apps on their phone or iPad, downloading one new app every month and discarding those that are not useful. You now have to assume that your audience is consuming most of your content from a device other than their desktop. Websites and emails need to have responsive design for tablets and smart phones, and the rest of your content needs to be easy to consume from these devices as well.  Perhaps this explains the increase in the popularity of video. While it may be hard to read a three-column PDF file on your phone (hint: one-column pages are mobile-friendly), video can easily be consumed while listening and watching.  Many examples of video marketing were shared during the event, and video content has the added benefit of helping you break through the noise.

10) Be okay with feeling scared. The audience collectively exhaled when Stephen Liguori issued this advice.  “The truth is,” he said, “we’re all scared, and that’s a good thing… It’s okay not to have the answers.”  He finished with the following four-step call to action, which superbly summarizes some of the most salient points from throughout the Executive MindXchange:

1. Play big or go home.
2. Innovation is disruptive, lean and “crowded”.
3. Get savvy around digital and data.
4. Forget 1-3, and help your customers.

These were just a few of the potentially one hundred or more take-aways from the 15th Anniversary 2014 MARKETING WORLD: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange.  If you attended, we’d like to know what action items you took away. If you didn’t make it, what questions do you hope are answered at next year’s event? Share with us and your peers below!

Sales and Marketing: If You Only Understood Me, We Could Get Along!

The chasm between marketing and sales organizations has existed for years and continues to be a challenge. Now more than ever, with the speed and complexity of today's marketplace, bridging the gap is crucial to enabling growth. In this excerpt from Frost & Sullivan's Executive MindXchange Chronicles, a panel of marketing and sales executives discuss the big issues: Why aren't we better aligned? What makes a good lead? What metrics make sense? And, the age-old question: How can sales better understand—and capitalize on—the value marketing brings to the table?



SESSION
SALES & MARKETING CROSSFIRE - If You Only Understood Me, We Could Get Along!

MODERATOR
Stephen Liguori, Former Executive Director, Global Innovation & New Models, GE

PANELISTS

Cheryl Bascomb, Director of Marketing & Business Development, BerryDunn
Christine Feuell, Vice President, Global Marketing & Strategy, Johnson Controls
George Stenitzer, Former Vice President, Communications, Tellabs
Andrew Cook, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Relations & Marketing Officer, Areva

TAKE-AWAY

It’s not just about sales and marketing; instead, marketing should be integrated across the whole organization, with involvement from all departments, including sales, tech, legal, and finance. The company’s mission must be driven throughout and across the entire organization to create a common culture and understanding of goals.

BEST PRACTICES

Liguori asked the panel: How can sales, marketing—and also technology, finances, and IT—become more integrated?

According to Andrew Cook of Areva, Inc., organizations need to ask: Is the company, from a sales and marketing perspective, living the soul of its mission? Your values and mission must be driven throughout the whole organization, and sales and marketing must be aligned with the product. If you end up with a marketing or brand management strategy, and then your product goes in another direction, you will have a mess.

The right answers depend largely on the culture of the organization, said Christine Feuell of Johnson Control. When she was at Ford, she said, the culture created attention in a way that was almost combative, which was unintentional. Sales was given priority, and marketing saw sales targets, whereas marketing metrics were longer term and less immediate. To fix the culture and increase alignment, marketing needs to get creative in how they demonstrate value and give sales reps valuable tools. The challenge is that marketing tends to operate a bit longer term and is more strategic, while sales is more tactical and day to day.

According George Stenitzer, former VP of Communications with Tellabs, his company had a situation in which sales was fighting with everybody else. Salespeople often had complaints like, “This customer needs this feature, and if you don’t give it to me I can’t sell it.” There was also an issue of who would get credit for revenue: sales or marketing? Tellabs attacked that by keeping the focus for each team on the customer.

Historically, strategic and business goals have come from the C-suite down a linear pipe, said BerryDunn’s Cheryl Bascomb. Products were handed to the sales force to sell. Now it’s more iterative, with more of a cycle in which sales can get feedback from marketing. Also, sales has a greater connection to the client and therefore can share feedback with marketing. The key is to balance the micro view of sales and marketing’s macro view to limit the tension.

TAKE-AWAY

Collaboration is crucial to the success of both sales and marketing. Liguori asked the panelists for some examples of how they’ve increased collaboration.

BEST PRACTICES

Feuell’s team had a situation in which marketing channels weren’t reaching their intended audience so the fundamental metrics goals weren’t being reached. The biggest problem was that marketing wasn’t getting any input from the rest of the organization about what was needed. So the team started over and got the necessary input. One key part of the collaboration was a training session in which sales reps were asked: How would you explain this product to your customer if you were just walking down the street? That gave marketing valuable insight and made sales know they were part of the solution.

When Feuell first arrived at Johnson Controls, the first thing she did was present to leadership what marketing was, to define the role and responsibility of the marketing team within the company. This type of transparency allows leadership teams to align efforts for a more cohesive strategy and more results-driven outcomes.

As a CPA firm, BerryDunn relies on consultative sales, Bascomb said. The company’s business developers are the sales team. Marketing needs to provide them with the sales tools they need. They think first of service, so from a marketing standpoint you have to help them think about the customer at the center of the wheel. That can be a challenge to help sales move forward, but data about what customers think of the brand can help.

TAKE-AWAY

In addition to information, marketing can also provide help with technology to sales.

Feuell said her company recently started using Salesforce. That helped because sales could see visually how they were progressing within the pipeline process, and as they converted leads and were putting them into the pipeline, marketing was able to show them true data and evidence.

According to Bascomb, BerryDunn’s salespeople could use technology comfortably, but they were less comfortable with social media. They came to marketing and asked for help meeting their goals. When the sales team became more comfortable with social media, they were able to help provide content for those platforms.

Stenitzer recommend looking for ways to help sales get their work done quicker and better. At Tellabs, a survey found that salespeople weren’t getting paid their full commissions, so staff members were spending as much as a day per week calculating their commissions on their own. That’s one area where better technology can help make the job easier.

FINAL THOUGHT

The key to success and integration is to start with the customer, Cook said. All parts of the organization should be aligned around a focus on the customer. You may have a great product and a great marketing campaign, but typically most employees don’t experience the customer, and that’s not good.

For marketing, campaigns shouldn’t just push the product, but present the company and its offerings in a customer-centric way. Marketers can also help the sales team think in the same way.

According to Feuell, marketers must learn how to represent the voice of the customer as best as they can and integrate that into their marketing materials. Focus on how you help grow customers and how you cross-sell more to those customers, Stenitzer said.

It all begins with a sale, Cook said, and sales always begin with a customer. Marketing’s job is to bring customers and sales together.

For more valuable insight from the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD 2014: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, be sure download a copy of Frost & Sullivan’s Executive MindXchange Chronicles, a collection of the key take-aways and best practices from all of the event’s presentations and interactive sessions.