Compound Marketing Group Blog

Real Time Marketing – BS or BlitzkriegPosted on August 13, 2013

It seems like marketers are rapidly becoming more andmore enamored with the concept of “real time marketing”.It’s easy to understand why, but first let me define theterms I’m using.

During the Super Bowl “brownout” of 2013, social mediamarketers began to popularize the term as a way ofexplaining the clever and quick reaction of the Oreobrand with its “You can still dunk in the dark” tweet. Nowyou can find social media agencies that have popped upfocused on this theme and the RTM sucks blog does agreat job of lampooning the usually lame attempts of big company marketers to utilize social media channels innear-real time.

I’m happy to see that the real time concept has not been totally co-opted by social media marketers. DavidMeerman Scott has broadened the concept to include virtually all elements of the marketing mix, responsive andrunning at high speed (that’s what I call Compound Marketing). In December, the Association of NationalAdvertisers (ANA) will hold their first Real-Time Marketing Conference in which “social, mobile, search and otherchannels” will be leveraged in real time via “data analytics and technology”.

So social is included but it’s not only social. Now we are getting closer to a definition that resonates.

Marketers also appear to be starting to converge on a definition. Asreported by eMarketer, in a recent DMA survey on behalf of integratedmarketing firm Neolane (recently purchased by Adobe for $600M),43% of marketers indicated that real time marketing was defined as“Dynamic personalized content across channels”.

(As an aside: it’s interestingthat marketers consider good old-fashioned email to be their #1 realtime marketing channel today.)

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Ray Kurzweil

In my opinion, combining the ANA and survey definitions produces the most satisfying definition:

“Real time marketing is the practice of leveraging big data and advanced analytics to drivedynamic, personalized content across all channels in real time.”

Now to the question at hand: BS or Blitzkrieg?

There is no doubt that the data clearly shows marketers are jumping on the real time trend. The optimization ofcampaigns in real time is a near-tidal wave sweeping over marketing organizations. Magna Global’s recentadvertising forecast shows that real time programmatic buying (largely via the new crop of demand side platformsand DMPs) is now 17% of all online display advertising in the US, rising to 48% by 2017 and already topping 30%in some more advanced markets. ClickZ also recently ran a lengthy article focusing on an IDC forecast withequally impressive growth statistics.

Google recently announced that it is also making it easier for marketers to serve dynamic content on websites, innear real time, via their new Real Time Analytics APIs. It seems like the forces of real time marketing areoverwhelming. Here comes the blitzkrieg!

But can all effective marketing happen in real time? Is there still a place for the(non-real time) considerations of marketing judgment made by real people?Recently, Japanese and German computer scientists simulated 1 second ofbrain activity in the lab. It took 83,000 microprocessors and 40 minutes ofrun time. The singularity (where machines become super-intelligent,surpassing humans) will probably get here one day (Ray Kurzweil predicts2045) but, until then, creative and intuitive minds will be necessary to keepthe marketing machines humming.

Another set of wildcards in the future of real time marketing relate to growingconcerns about privacy and data ownership. Currently, real time marketing isbased on the premise that marketers (or their solution providers) are able to

amass and leverage huge profiles of past behaviors, both on and off the web, to push relevant content. It seemsentirely possible that, at some point, people will decide that they want to own (and control) their own profiles. Inthat scenario, the whole model of real time (push) marketing could be turned on its head to be replaced bypersonal infomediaries that can become effective finders and filters (pullers) for people without sacrificing theirprivacy. It’s the same real time approach based on the same set of technologies, but utilized from the oppositeperspective – about pull instead of push.

Historians have come to use the word “blitzkrieg” to denote a highly mobile force “utilizing speed and surprise” toencircle and ultimately overwhelm the enemy. It turns out that the Germans never ‘officially’ adopted a recognizedCompound Marketing Group Blog Blog at WordPress.com. The Twenty Ten Theme.


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Colin Powell on Leadership

strategy of blitzkrieg but the method is simply what evolved into a winning approach on the battlefield. Similarly,real time (push) marketing will win more and more battles over time because it’s simply the most effectiveapproach to take today – it’s clearly not BS.

But will it win the war?

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Posted in API, B2B, Compound, real time | Tagged analytics, association of national advertisers, big data, marketing channel, real time marketing | 1 Comment |

A Compound Approach to Great LeadershipPosted on February 18, 2013

What makes a great leader? That is truly one of themost written-about topics in business today. Even theWikipedia entry on Leadership would take a fastreader the better part of a day to work through.

And no wonder. So many theories – some grounded inresearch and others based on real-world experience.All contain at least some truth.

I’m not going to claim this article will advance thestate of the academic discourse on the theory ofleadership but I do want to highlight what I havefound to be two of the best practical explanations ofwhat makes a good leader and then combine themwith my opinion of how to execute them mosteffectively.

Back in 2001, Jim Collins released the business classic, Good to Great. Based on primary research on companiesthat had sustained “greatness” over an extended period of time, Collins outlined a theory of a five-tier hierarchy ofleadership, detailing the characteristics at each level. At the highest level, Collins describes leaders having a“paradoxical combination” of personal humility and professional will.

I’m sure you have met many leaders that demonstrate one or the other, but very few have both – especially thepersonal humility part. Larger-than-life leaders with big personalities are very attractive to boards and others whomake such hiring decisions, but Collin’s research showed that lasting, positive impact on an organization comesfrom a leader who is willing to sublimate his or her ego to the benefit of the organization.

Well worth at least reading the summary linked to above, and the entire book for those that haven’t read it, orread it many years ago. (It actually takes more than just a level 5 leader to create a “great” company.)

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My second favorite description of the characteristics of a great leader comes from Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn,care of an interview he did with The New York Times in 2012 and that he has since elaborated on in variousforums. In short, the characteristics are:

the ability to inspire others to achieve shared objectivesa clear vision for where the organization needs to gothe skill to effectively communicate that visionand, ultimately, the courage to overcome challenges and doubters

Inspiration, vision, communication, and courage – Weiner’s 4 key characteristics of any successful leader. Butdon’t take my summary as sufficient – do take a few minutes to read the entire article. I’ve met Jeff and heabsolutely exudes these qualities – no doubt a significant contributing factor to the incredible success of LinkedIn.

Finally, to my small value add, as per the overall theme of this blog. Taking an integrated (or, so called“compound”) approach to leadership will create returns far in excess of a piecemeal approach. Effective leadershipis a system, not an act. The six key elements of this system are each powerful on their own but doing themtogether multiplies their power dramatically.

Let me leave you with one other gem. Today’s new generation of leaders may have missed being exposed to one ofthe most interesting and powerful summaries of the requirements and characteristics of leadership ever written.Back in 2003, a widely distributed slide deck contained Colin Powell’s “A Leadership Primer.” Irrespective of youropinion of Powell, these are timeless principles and highly recommended reading.

Perhaps there are other characteristics of effective leadership that contribute to your personal approach. Nomatter what makes up the core elements of your style of leadership, taking a compound approach is certain toincrease your likelihood of driving a successful organization.

Blaine Mathieu

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Posted in Compound, Integrated, Leadership, LinkedIn | Tagged characteristics of a great leader, jeff weiner, Leadership, what makes a great leader | Leave a comment |

Quickie: New Experian Report on Integrated MarketingPosted on September 8, 2012

I just finished reading The 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report. 150 pages and a lot of solidcontent – worth the read – and so I thought I would do a “quickie” blog post about it. You do have to fill in alead-gen form to download the report (as you would expect a good B2B marketer to do). Note that I have noaffiliation with Experian whatsoever (in fact, I used to be CMO of a quasi-competitor). Some highlights:

First, I thought the Customer Engagement Framework described on page 5 was a very simple, yet powerful way tothink about how marketers should interact with the customer’s journey. How effectively does your marketingstrategy reflect your customers’ journeys?

Next, the Marketing Sophistication Curve on page 6 does a great job of capturing the theme of this blog – thatoptimized, cross-channel (compound) marketing initiatives are the way that the most successful marketers drivetheir businesses. Where does your organization fit on this curve today?

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Another great graphic that caught my eye was Experian’s Marketing Technology Ecosystem on page 8. I’ve seen(and created) many graphics like this to explain the elements of integrated marketing, but this captures most ofthose elements in a simplified way, better than most I have seen. How effectively are you taking advantage of eachof these methods?



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Finally, fast-forwarding over lots of great content and best practices to page 109, Experian recasts a ForresterResearch graphic about Data Management Platforms. The basic point here is that advanced marketersincreasingly need an integrated system to manage all the “big data” that their marketing efforts produce, in orderto enable continuous optimization. What’s the state of your company’s marketing data management platform?(I’m guessing it doesn’t look like the graphic below.) Do you have a plan to get from here to there?

These are just a few highlights. I do recommend downloading the full report as it contains a lot more solidcontent. Although it has a strong B2C slant, B2B marketers can definitely learn a lot as well. Thanks Experian!

Blaine Mathieu

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A Compound Approach to Bringing Combined B2B Solutions to MarketPosted on August 22, 2012

As a business-person involved in running a successful multi-productbusiness, at one point or another you might have found yourself in thefollowing situation: Companies that sell to other companies (B2Bmarketers) develop products to meet the needs of individual target marketsegments. These markets are often defined by particular departmentaluse-cases, i.e., meeting a need that the marketing department has, or thefinance group, or the sales team, etc. All good.

At some point, what often happens is the company/solution providerstarts to cover so many bases (segments) in the client base that it becomes obvious that a more integrated(compound) approach presents itself as an opportunity. Rather than take a piecemeal approach to the client –selling it point solutions here and there – why not present a more integrated or combined offering? Perhaps youfeel it’s time to become a true strategic partner to your clients, rather than simply a provider of individualproducts. Bringing that combined offer to market successfully is what this article is all about.

Step 1: Agree on goals/targets/outcomes

It is important to define exactly what are you trying to achieve with this effort. Some possible outcomes mightinclude:

Increasing customer stickiness/retention (under the premise that the more elements of your offering they areusing and the more widely they are using it, the less likely they will be to leave).Grow your “share of wallet”. Chances are, your client/prospect has limited and defined budgets for how muchhe can spend in the domains you cover – at least in the short/medium term. Taking a larger share of thatbudget is a driver of revenue growth.Leverage your installed base. Companies with a significant installed base for one element of the (to be)combined offering can use that as part of an effective and relatively inexpensive “land and expand” strategy toget the entire solution into that client. It’s almost always less expensive to expand an existing client than togain a new one.Attract new customers. If the value proposition is clear (see below) then there can be a significant attractiontowards buying “whole product solutions” that meet an entire category of need vs. just partially addressingthat need. An combined offering is more likely to be a whole product solution which will attract new customersthat might not have considered the offering before in its component pieces (especially if pricing/packaging isset correctly).

A key element here is to quantify all these goals against current operating metrics and then measure the outcomes.The success of any initiative like this should be clearly defined and readily measurable, otherwise it’s impossible toknow whether the effort was worth it. And it will take a lot of effort, so the ROI will have to be clear.

Step 2A: Break down internal silos

This is the hardest step in this initiative and the one most fraught withCompound Marketing Group Blog Blog at WordPress.com. The Twenty Ten Theme.


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danger. Organizational change is always hard. It is likely that, in order toensure the success of its individual product lines, your company hasorganized itself, put reward structures in place, and set team andindividual goals that are focused and do not at all take into account thesuccess of a combined approach to customers. Failure to address the silo

issue aggressively will guarantee the failure of this initiative.

The hard work of leadership begins here, and it must start right at the top. The CEO has to clearly build alignmentwith all stakeholders that this is the way forward for the company. Then actions need to be taken in terms oforganizational structures, compensation plans, and goal setting to ensure that all key players are aligned.Half-hearted measures will never work because – as the saying goes – it’s impossible to be half-pregnant. Eitheryou are in, or you are out.

[This is not to imply that the marketing/sale of the individual, component products must end. Far from it - therewill be many prospects (perhaps the vast majority, initially) who are truly only in the market for one particularcomponent of your offering. Clearly you must make it easy for that prospect to discover the value that they arelooking for. But, at the same time, it is important to build the awareness that - when the client is ready - you canoffer much more than an individual point solution and that it will be easy for the prospect to engage with you asmore of a strategic partner. This is the essence of a successful "land and expand" go-to-market strategy - more onthat in a future posting.]

Once executive leadership has demonstrated commitment, then constant communication needs to flow down andthroughout the organization so momentum is maintained (and continually increased). Old habits die hard and thetemptation will always be to go back to what worked so well in the past. Assigning someone as the clear executivesponsor of the initiative will also be critical to building momentum when all the reasons it is “too hard” or“seemingly impossible” start to crop up. Get the people/organization/structure right and the rest will follow.

Step 2B: Create integrated positioning, pricing, and packaging

Okay, so everyone is aligned. Chances are that you’ve already begun this next step because, without a compellingpositioning statement for the integrated solution, it will be impossible to build the internal support necessary tobreak down the silos. (That’s why these steps are listed as 2A and 2B.)

At its simplest, a positioning statement generally contains the following:

For <target market>,

<solution> is the <category in which it competes>,

that <competitive advantage>,

so that you can <customer benefit>.

You can believe this because <proof point>.



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It continues to amaze me how few products/solutions have a clearly defined and widely understood positioningstatement. Having said this, it is somewhat understandable because getting this right is really hard. On thepositive side, the process of getting this right should probably involve many key stakeholders and therefore can bepart of the silo busting that I discuss above. Nothing helps enroll people in change efforts better than having theminvolved in creating the plan.

As part of setting positioning it can be very helpful to agree on the core personas that make up this new, combinedtarget market. From there, understanding the user journeys that each of these personas take in order toaccomplish their objectives can be highly informative as to what the position of the combined offering should be.Of course, this work is also extremely useful in future product development to enhance the combined offering andwill also become important later in perfecting all the various go-to-market implementation details.

Following that is the task of setting packaging and pricing. Building the business model for an integrated solutioncombining many elements is much more complex than simply adding up the prices of the individual elements. Insome cases, the price of the combined offering will end up being less than the individual elements – unless thevalue of having them integrated together is truly compelling and takes the solution into a whole new realm ofvalue. If the value is less about product synergies and more about simplifying the purchase and ownershipexperience, then pricing of a combined offering will likely be under some pressure.

Whenever possible, try to involve the “voice of the customer” when doing this step. While classic “marketresearch” may not always be timely or within budget, another alternative is to test market the combined offeringin a geography that is insulated from your primary markets. At the very least, ensure that there are significantflexibility and pre-arranged fall-back plans in place in case the new approach does not resonate as clearly or asquickly as intended. Having said that, resist the temptation to give up too early or easily – organizational forcesand historic momentum are probably not in favor of this new combined approach and so you must be prepared toweather some adversity.

Step 3: Get ready to sell

Goals are set, plans are ready, some early market feedback is in – now is the time to bring it all together. Chancesare that you already have a significant installed base using at least one of the individual elements of this new,combined solution. The obvious path of least resistance is to go after them and leverage your existing (hopefullypositive) relationships to upsell to the new, complete solution.

The first thing to do is to complete a detailed account review for each significant client. Make a map of all thevarious touch-points and relationships that exist between your company and the target company, across whateverproducts they might have purchased in the past. Tools like LinkedIn and Jigsaw can be extremely helpful inmapping out a complete view of potential organizational stakeholders that may not have had a direct relationshipwith your company in the past.

Ultimately the goal is to build out a complete strategic account plan. As noted above, many account managementorganizations use Mindjet maps to make this happen, and then track activities relative to this client in Mindjet aswell (often linked into a CRM system like salesforce). Building and maintaining this living document is the key tointegrated account management, which is even more important when you are selling a complete, combinedCompound Marketing Group Blog Blog at WordPress.com. The Twenty Ten Theme.


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solution and not just individual products.

Of course, supporting the sales process must be effective marketing communications. Ensuring that the valueproposition is easily understood on the website and via all marketing/sales materials will be critical. (It is alsopossible you have a self-serve sales model in which case marketing and sales are virtually the same thing.) Finally,don’t forget the back office – usually a model change such as this will require significant prep work to ensure salesare able to be recorded and accounted for correctly.

Step 4: Go!

With all this prep work – it’s now time for the fun to begin! An overridingtheme should be simplicity. Providing a combined/integrated, cross-organizational solution should make it easier for your customers tounderstand, purchase, implement, use, and reorder than it was previously.If bringing things together has results in making any element of thecustomer experience more complex, then it’s time to go back to thedrawing board.

As a Forrester analyst noted during a recent conference on customer experience, “If the customer is your boss,then the voice of the customer is your performance review.” You should always be attending to the voice of thecustomer, but at the initial stages of launch you need to be hyper-vigilant in this regard. Be ready, be agile, andhave backup plans in place in case things don’t all go according to plan (as they rarely do).

The Economist noted recently that, “The product is the outcome, not the goods.” In other words, your customersare not really buying your combined solution – they are buying the results that solution delivers. Focus on thecustomer, provide real value, and you will take your business to the next level.

Blaine Mathieu

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Posted in B2B, Complexity, Compound, Integrated, LinkedIn, Mind map | Tagged b2b markets, integrated marketing, positioning statement, segmentation, share of wallet,target market segments, whole product solutions | 1 Comment |

Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Tony HortonPosted on May 16, 2012

If you have ever watched any late-night TV (and that’s probably the only time successful marketers have to watchTV) you have certainly seen fitness guru Tony Horton promoting his P90X video series. For those of you that missit because you fall asleep on the couch during the closing credits of Mad Men, P90X is an exercise program forpeople that are already in pretty good shape. If you can’t do 3 pull-ups or 15 push-ups for men (1 pull-up and 15push-ups on knees for women) then you might not be P90X-ready. But – ready or not – if you are a marketer then

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Tony Horton – P90X

Omron HBF-514C

there are some lessons in P90X for you.

I’ve been doing the program, along with the various offshoots it has spawned, foralmost 3 years now and I am a big fan. I’ve always been in decent shape but,because of P90X, I’m in better shape now than I was at half my age. The mostinteresting thing I have observed about P90X is that the lessons I have learnedfrom doing this program are perfectly correlated with marketing lessons I’veabsorbed over the years. Let me share some of them with you.

Mix It Up: Use Muscle Confusion

At the core of P90X are 12 video routines that include weight training, bodyweight exercises (pull-ups and push-ups), yoga, kenpo karate, core exercises, andfunctional fitness such as cardio and plyometrics. Not only is the program itself

highly diversified but, even within each individual routine, you are constantly using many different muscles in anintegrated way. One result of this is that the “plateauing” effect of regular exercise programs – that point where itseems you just cannot see any more improvement – is overcome. Tony Horton calls this concept “MuscleConfusion” and the parallels with integrated or “compound” marketing approaches are clear.

Sitting on a machine in a gym working on a particular muscle are likely to build some impressive lookingspot-results but not an overall fit or athletic person. Similarly, successful marketers must exercise every elementof their marketing arsenal – in an integrated way – to ensure that results don’t plateau and that the overallmarketing machine is as strong as it can be.

Measure and Track Everything

As marketers we understand the value of metrics and measurement better than most. But the P90X programreally helped reinforce for me, in a visceral way, how truly important measurement is. For most workout routines,P90X provides detailed worksheets that are used to log your performance for each individual exercise. (In mostcases, the only rest you get between exercises is the few seconds it takes to write your performance down.) Thishistorical record ends up serving as an invaluable guide to driving increased performance in the future. In myexperience, most marketers do a pretty lax job of keeping such a record of past activities – a big mistake.

On top of that, a few months into the program I bought one of those coolOmron scales that measures body fat and many other factors beyondsimple weight. It shouldn’t have surprised me but it turns out thathaving the ability to precisely measure your progress towards increasingfitness was a key motivator for me and remains so to this day.Sometimes the obvious metrics (like weight) aren’t the ones that reallyneed improving and the same principle applies to marketingmeasurement.

Build a Strong Foundation

Tony Horton continually reinforces an elemental principle of P90X which is that the “sexy” muscles will only workCompound Marketing Group Blog Blog at WordPress.com. The Twenty Ten Theme.


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effectively if they are tied to a strong core. The core of the body (from the shoulders to the waist) are what tieseverything else together and the program spends a lot of time working on these areas. The result is a person whois overall more fit and less prone to injury.

Similarly, the “core” principles and practices of marketing hold as much power today as they ever have. Programslike social media marketing and mobile marketing are very sexy and can produce powerful results. But manymarketers today are under-emphasizing core concepts such as keeping a clean email list, putting compelling andclear content on the website, and choosing search marketing terms that best fit the company’s positioning. Don’tignore the sexy and innovative stuff but always make sure the core is strong.

Form is King. Corollary: If it Hurts, Stop

Like my dad always told me, “If you are going to do something, do it right.” The principle applies equally well inphysical training as in marketing. Through no fault of the P90X program, I have injured myself a few times overthe past few years while doing some of the routines. In each case it was because I was pushing too hard and doingan exercise with bad form on the mistaken impression that pushing harder is necessary to get better results.Instead, the result was that I have had to take some extended breaks as my body needed to recover from injuries Iinflicted on it. (No permanent damage – thank goodness.)

Marketers, likewise, should always use “good form” when exercising their programs and activities. The biggestmarketing mistakes I have ever made were done when I pushed too hard, beyond the boundaries of commonsense and best-practice in hopes of a “home run” result. Sometimes that works – but usually not.

A related principle is: if it hurts, stop doing it. Most of the times I injured myself during P90X my body gave mean early warning sign. Usually this was in the form of a little twinge of pain or a popping sound. I know for sure(because I do eventually learn these lessons) that stopping early at the first sign of danger usually avoids a muchmore serious issue later on.

If you are watching for them, you will get early signals that programs might be coming off the rails and need to bestopped, or at least pivoted into another direction. Always keep your mind open to the warning signs and don’tdismiss them just because you are determined to see a prearranged plan through to the bitter end.

Make it a Habit

Working out, especially the tough workouts in P90X, are no joyride. Tony Horton’s wry sense of humor definitelyhelps keep the spirit up but, occasionally, the knowledge of the sometimes grueling workout to come can be adisincentive to pressing Play on that DVD (especially if you get up at 5am every morning to do it). Similarly, withmarketing, we understand all the tremendous work that is involved in launching a new program or campaign.Especially in the early days (before tracking and measurement start to show their benefits) the results areuncertain. How to get over this hurdle?

The best way I have found out of this trap is to make working out a “habit”. I do the program at the same timeevery day and I purposefully bought an alarm clock that was hard to adjust so I could not reach over in the middleof the night and give myself an extra 30 minutes sleep. At some point, it just became habit and now I get anuneasy feeling if I don’t do the program on any given day – even when I’m traveling on business.Compound Marketing Group Blog Blog at WordPress.com. The Twenty Ten Theme.


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Marketing is so varied in its potential activities that it may seem hard to make habits out of them. But manyaspects of a successfully run marketing organization can and should function like a well-oiled machine. Adopt therepeatable habits of good marketers and don’t let them go, no matter what.

Exercise is Only Part of the Story

P90X is a great exercise routine. But the producers realized, early on, thataggressive, integrated exercise was not enough. A good diet is the otherhalf of great fitness and P90X goes to great lengths to help peopleunderstand and adopt an improved diet. Now I don’t claim to eat the bestfoods every time but I strive every day to improve and many of theprinciples described above apply equally well to a healthy eating programas to an exercise program.

This is precisely the principle of compound marketing. Great marketingand communications programs need to be combined with strong products,

a coordinated sales channel, a coherent business model – all based on a deep understanding of the customer to bemaximally effective. Any individual element, no matter how well-executed on its own, will only get you so far.Success is about exercise AND diet.

Final Lesson: Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself

Despite learning all of the above lessons over and over again, I continue to break every one of them on occasion.Sometimes I still push too hard, or turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep, or eat that extra large piece ofchocolate cake that I didn’t really need. Similarly, as a marketer, we all sometimes run campaigns withoutadequate preparation or measurements in place and without having every component completely integrated.That’s life – nobody’s perfect. Don’t beat yourself up when that happens. Just put it behind you, get back in thesaddle, and make tomorrow a better day for fitness (or marketing).

Thanks Tony

Okay, so maybe I didn’t learn everything I know about marketing from Tony Horton. But the principles I havelearned and practice in my physical fitness program absolutely reinforce the concepts I have learned and try topractice as a marketer and high-tech executive every day. I hope you do as well.

Blaine Mathieu

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IF (Agile NOT Compound) THEN Fail

IF (Agile NOT Compound) THEN FailPosted on January 26, 2012

According to Wikipedia, agile software development is “a groupof software development methodologies based on iterativeand incremental development, where requirements andsolutions evolve through collaboration betweenself-organizing, cross-functional teams. It… encourages rapidand flexible response to change. [Emphasis mine.]

Agile was developed as a response to the many challenges ofthe prevailing approach to product development known as“waterfall”. In waterfall development, teams follow awell-defined step-wise process in which requirements are fullyfleshed out prior to any implementation (development) workactually happening.

In very stable markets, the waterfall approach can produce good results based on a deep understanding of themarket. But, increasingly, the pace of change is accelerating and a more “agile” response is needed. As this greatsurvey from VersionOne points out, many software development organizations have already made the transitionto some flavor of agile development.

At my previous company I was part of driving the shift from waterfall to Scrum (a form of agile). That transitionwas already underway at Mindjet when I joined and I have truly learned in both cases that becoming agile shouldbe thought of as a journey, not a destination.

As my Product organizations have become agile, what has become more and more obvious is agile developmentwill fail to achieve the goals of the organization unless the other parts of the it are agile as well. This isparticularly true with respect to marketing and sales. Potential disconnects:

Product functionality changes every few weeks but marketing materials don’t keep upProduct documentation, training videos, and FAQs are outdated by the time they are producedBoth of these issues are exacerbated by then having to localize (outdated) content into other languagesFinally, salespeople constantly feel that they are ill-informed to sell the products

Solving this conundrum is one of the most critical issues facing organizations that currently have – or are movingto – agile product teams. Clearly, such organizations need to take a compound approach to implementing agilepractices across the organization – including not just product, but also marketing, sales, and other areas. Beingagile only in the product function may work for small startups where the product is the company. But for morecomplex organizations, it is a recipe for failure.

There are many great books and documented processes for how to become agile. But, more than anything else,embracing agile requires a mindset change. Product people began making that change ten years ago and it iscritical that other areas of the organization catch up. Look for these behaviors as proof that the appropriatechange is taking hold in your organization:Compound Marketing Group Blog Blog at WordPress.com. The Twenty Ten Theme.


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Marketing let’s go of producing the 80% of materials and content that nobody really reads anyway and justfocuses on the critical coreSales begins to see it as an advantage that the actual shipping product is even better than the one they “sold”and they begin to promote this as a value to the customerIn general, the entire organization is willing to give up being 100% correct in order to move faster or be moreresponsive to the market. In other words, enjoy the fact that sales, marketing, and product will live in areal-time dance where they are never perfectly aligned but the market doesn’t care about that anyway

Will your business really die if your product has a new feature that didn’t make it into the documentation for ashort time? Will sales crater if a feature was dropped at the last minute and gets released only 3 weeks later? Ididn’t think so. You are selling benefits and value – not features – anyway, right?

Mindjet has recently written a lot on this topic in their new Conspire blog. In fact, they have an entire section on“Agile Business”. If the topic of taking a compound approach to creating an agile organization interests you, Ihighly recommend you check it out. Until next time.

Blaine Mathieu

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Compound Product Strategy in ActionPosted on September 16, 2011

My first year as Chief Products Officer at Mindjet has been an incrediblewhirlwind. Mindjet has long been known for its great products – especiallyon the desktop – but my mandate was to help take the company to a newlevel. That level is all about taking a “compound” approach to product –and that’s what I will describe in this posting. I am so excited that thefruits of that labor have now launched.

A key challenge for Mindjet was to reposition the company into the space we call Collaborative WorkManagement. At its simplest, collaborative work management is all about helping people work better, together. Toenable that, we had to initiate and execute on a product strategy that was truly integrated from many differentperspectives.

First, we had to create an offering which connected the benefits of ideation (capturing of ideas and information tofigure out what work to do), to project planning (allocating resources and scheduling that work), to taskmanagement (coordinating and tracking the execution of the work). And all of this had to be done in a highlyvisual way that both enables, and benefits from, team collaboration. This kind of integrated approach to getting

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work done has never been fully executed in the market before now.

Second, to execute on this technically, we had to build a system thatincluded and integrated the functions of document management, projectmanagement, collaboration, and information visualization/mapping(Mindjet’s historic area of strength). That’s what Mindjet Connect andMindjet Cohuman are now all about.

Third, to provide anytime, anywhere access we had to create a system that works from the web browser, via richdesktop applications, and via mobile devices – all integrated with a centralized, cloud-based service that enablesreal-time communication and information sharing. Very few companies (and none Mindjet’s size) can claim suchan integrated, multi-platform product offering.

Finally, from a business model perspective, Mindjet has designed and now implemented the most integratedmodel that it has ever brought to market. Our totally free mobile products drive users to our free cloud-basedapplications (Mindjet Connect and Mindjet Cohuman) which, in turn, drive business to our paid applications(Mindjet Connect Business and MindManager on the desktop). In addition, these products are being broughttogether as targeted whole-product “solutions” that both Mindjet and its customers will derive even more valuefrom. Mindjet is now working to bring this targeted whole-product solutions initiative to market in 2012 – but youcan see the beginnings of it here. The bottom line of all this: Mindjet now has a “compound business model” thatwill certainly further accelerate its success in the months and years ahead.

So from four perspectives – benefits, functions, platforms, and business models – Mindjet has executed on acompound product strategy that truly enables it to deliver on its Collaborative Work Management positioning.

But that’s not all, since whole product marketing is about much more than the core product itself. Mindjet is nowusing the wider principles of compound marketing in a very powerful way [for inspiration, see my previousposting on Apple's use of compound marketing principles] to get Mindjet’s new positioning andproducts/solutions to market. These include integrated channel strategy, promotions and communicationsstrategies, and support strategy to bring it all together for our users.

Results of this have been extremely encouraging so far, with tremendous press coverage (just a few examplearticles here and here, and some rich media below) and hundreds of thousands of new users for our newapplications within just a few days.

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As of this writing, it is still early days. Stay tuned for an update as things progress.

My takeaway for you is simple: take a compound approach to every element of your market strategy, includingyour whole-product strategy, and your odds of success go up dramatically! Until next time.

Blaine Mathieu

P.S. – Let me thank the great folks at Mindjet who did all the great work I describe above.

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Apple – the Compound Marketing ExpertPosted on June 23, 2011 by Blaine Mathieu

Apple’s success in the market in undeniable. In 2001, revenues were justover $5b with a net loss of $25m. Fast-forward to 2010 and revenuesexceeded $65b with a net income of $14b. Wow.

Tech historians and Apple experts can come up with many reasons for thisincredible run. The return of Steve Jobs. The company-saving partnershipwith Microsoft. The release of Mac OS X based on NeXT. The Apple retailstores strategy. The release of the iPod. Catchy advertising campaigns. Therelease of iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad, etc., etc.

Of course, all this is true. And perhapsApple’s current string of success canultimately be traced back to the return

of Steve Jobs in 1997. But I would argue that the real credit lies with Apple’s(Steve’s) embrace of the concepts of compound marketing.

Towards the end of Apple’s first run of success, it was in the middle of thetornado of the PC revolution. Of course, to benefit from the tornado acompany still has to do many things right. But during Apple’s entire secondact, starting in 2001, the PC tornado was basically over. Apple needed to findanother way to drive its success in a maturing market.

In a previous posting, I described how compound marketing is the purposefulintegration of:

The whole productThe business modelChannel managementAnd the communications mixAll based on a deep understanding of the customer and market

Who could argue that Apple’s whole product strategy, including the massive ecosystem of 3 party applicationsthat have been developed is anything but masterful? Many competitors, and some of its partners, might despisethe tight control Apple has on its business model, but it is clearly one of the best examples of platform-as-businessthe tech industry has ever seen.

Compound Marketing Group BlogHigher impact results for experiencedmarketers

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Related to that, the tight control Apple has on its distribution channels, both online and off, provide it with acompetitive advantage that is hard to beat. It’s mastery of the communications mix makes people treat adcampaigns and tradeshows as events, vs. marketing to avoid. Finally, while there is some controversy about towhat extent Apple makes use of “standard” market research techniques, it is clear that Apple demonstrates a verystrong, innate, understanding of the current and future needs of the market – an understanding that has-beencompetitors like Nokia and RIM would die for (and probably are).

But most important of all is the way all these elements are integrated and orchestrated together. That is theessence of compound marketing, broadly defined. Apple is the master of compound marketing – and we can alllearn from the company while recognizing that it is not any one single element which is driving Apple’s success –it is all of them together.

Blaine Mathieu

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Compound Market Research – Alive and WellPosted on May 10, 2011 by Blaine Mathieu

Since I recently moved to a new company, in charge of product strategy, I have found myself involved in a lot ofmarket research over the past few months. “Understanding the customer” has to be the foundation of any productor go-to-market strategy and I was determined to start my analysis of the company’s strategy from thatperspective.

Given my background in market research (directly in charge of it at Gartner, Adobe, and Corel, and indirectly atvirtually every other company I have worked with) it has been interesting to observe – and be part of – therevolution in market research best practices over the last 15 years or so. FYI, my definition of market research isfrom Kotler:

“The systematic design, collection, analysis and reporting of data and findings relevant to aspecific situation facing the company.”

More specifically, I am mostly referring in this article to “primary research”, the use of specialized methods for thedirect collection of custom data, as opposed to “secondary research” which involves analyzing data or intelligencethat have already been collected by others.

The process of primary research generally follows a process like this:

Market Research Process


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Unfortunately, this linear process tends to drive a silo mentality. One project, one research methodology, oneprocess followed from beginning to end, one result.

Next.

Given this, it is amazing to me how the basic practice of market research has truly evolved to one that totallyembraces the concepts of compound marketing.

In her blog posting, The Death of Market Research, Forrester analyst Tamara Barber begins to lay out the casethat “the need for traditional market research data is decreasing” as organizations are literally drowning in data.She posits that, as the ‘market research department’ dies, the new ‘insights department’ will replace it with themandate of taking all the disparate sources of market and customer data that bombard the company every dayand combining them into one integrated (compounded) view. The value of this insight is more than just the sumof its parts because it finally provides the organization with the complete picture.

Of course, the biggest recent innovation in market research, besides simply taking a more integrated approach, isthe advent of the use of social media tools as part of the market researcher’s toolbox. Tons of information can becollected both by passively monitoring social communication flows as well as by actively engaging the permanent“research panel” that social media-enabled communities provide (to enable surveys, virtual focus groups, etc.).

Of course, as with all research tools, social media market researchers must be careful to take note of sample bias.Unless your market is truly represented by your social media followers, you will have to supplement with othertools to get a complete picture. (As you should, anyway, if you are taking a compound research approach.)

With this in mind, I thought it would be helpful to re-publish a table I initially created back in 2002 that looks atthe how the different types of market research can be used in an integrated fashion at different points in theresearch process. Credit to The Market Research Toolbox by Edward F. McQuarrie from which I adapted thistable:

Click for full-size image

The trick here is not to pick one tool but, rather, the range of tools that will work together to provide the mostaccurate picture from which to make a decision.

Whatever your involvement with market research, whether it’s as a professional researcher or as an incidental(but important) part of your regular job, make sure you take an integrated approach and you are sure to benefitfrom the deeper understanding that results.

Blaine Mathieu


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Whatever Happened to Compound Marketing?Posted on April 1, 2011 by Blaine Mathieu

A funny thing has happened in the time since my last blog post. Absolutely nothing.

What I mean by that is, over the period of just the past few months, I havenoticed a marked shift in the sentiment and interest levels of marketers. Thesocial media / cloud bubble we are certainly in right now seems to havecaused all the air to suck out of any marketing room that does not have thewords “social media” or “cloud” stenciled on the door. Better yet, if bothwords appear together.

The shift has been dramatic and startling. In mid-to-late 2010 marketerswere constantly (and finally) talking about integrated/ connected/ compoundmarketing – about the power of multiple marketing channels workingtogether more powerfully than they could apart. It was easy for me to findrelevant articles to tweet about and blogs to comment on. Lately, I have hadto search very hard to find them.

In his recent Om Says column, Om Malik posed the question “When is a tech company dead?” The article is verymuch worth reading, but the short answer is basically: when it stops being perceived as being about the future,and starts being associated primarily with the status quo, it is pronounced “dead”.

Replace the word “company” with “concept” and part of me thinks (hopefully) that this is what has happened tothe concept of compound (integrated, connected, etc.) marketing. The concept is now so obvious, sowell-understood, so competently practiced by marketers of all types, that it is no longer associated with the future,no longer considered “aspirational”.

Let me give my head a shake – that’s crazy-talk. Could such a shift have happened in as little as four months?Marketers didn’t become competent at cross-channel, compound marketing overnight. Or perhaps I am justmissing all the activity – not looking in the right place. What do you think?

In any case, stay tuned for more discussion about the wide view of taking a compound marketing approach – notlimited to a discussing of marketing channels but widened to include all aspects of the marketing mix.

Blaine Mathieu

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Executing a Successful Compound Job SearchPosted on February 16, 2011 by Blaine Mathieu


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Its not as easy as pressing a button

Okay, so I have an admission to make. It was more than just my desire to give back to the Marketing communitythat caused me to start the Compound Marketing Group blog. It was also a cornerstone of my compound jobsearch strategy – one that has resolved successfully – but more on that later.

When I parted ways with my previous company, online marketingsoftware/services company Lyris Inc., back in November 2010after three successful years, I knew very well that the world ofsearching (i.e., marketing) for a job had changed dramatically.Obviously, the biggest change was the advent of social media.Social media was certainly alive three years ago but, over thattimespan, it evolved from an interesting adjunct to a job searchinto a virtual “killer app”.

I knew I needed to make strong use of this killer job-searching appbecause, for the first time in many years, I was actually… wait forit… “looking for work”. In fact, ever since I graduated with my firstdegree in 1989, I have moved from one job or company to another,with nary a pause. But this was not the case this time around.

In addition, one huge benefit I have long received from my positions is that I have always been provided with alarge megaphone through which to amplify my personal brand. Because of my knowledge and nature, I usuallyend up as the key public spokesperson for any company I go to work for and this has provided me with a strongpublic persona. To prove it, you can see for yourself that a Google search for Blaine Mathieu produces many pagesof valid results. But without a company’s brand and market power behind me for the first time in a long time, Iwas basically megaphone-less. I vowed I would never let this happen again, and so my compound job searchbegan.

My first move was to clarify my positioning statement for the market. How should I define myself, the space I playin, my differentiation, and the benefit I would bring? This is truly one of the hardest things for many job searchersto do. Just as it is hard for companies to focus their positioning(s), for fear of eliminating potential buyers fromthe broadest possible market, it is tempting for a job searcher to position him or herself as vaguely as possible sothat more jobs would seem relevant. Of course, this is a fool’s game since companies will rarely hire vaguegeneralists – they want accomplished experts who can solve specific problems.

After much introspection and discussion with friends and mentors, I settled on the following positioning:

Blaine Mathieu [product] is an experienced high-technology and software executive [category]who has a rare combination of both product and marketing expertise [differentiation] so that yourcompany can create and drive powerful integrated strategies [benefit]. He has demonstratedsuccess at well-known companies such as Gartner, Adobe, Corel, and Lyris [reason to believe].

To get across this my expertise in “integrating” marketing and product strategies, I came up with thedifferentiated concept of “compound marketing”. As a result, I hope you agree that I have built out the thesis ofcompound marketing in a fairly compelling way.


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Once this was clarified, I began to pull together my compound job search plan. Ultimately this plan would includemany linked components, including the following:

This Compound Marketing Group WordPress blog, in order to demonstrate my knowledge and expertise in“long form”The compoundmktg twitter feed, to drive traffic back to the blog and show my awareness of current events inthe space my expertiseMy LinkedIn profile, which I spent a lot of time tweakingA Compound Marketing LinkedIn discussion group, to enable discussion and further brand-buildingVarious printed materials, including my resume and business cards, all professionally done

Note that I did not include posting my resume to sites such as Monster.com as part of my integrated plan. Formost job seekers I would highly recommend using such sites. But as I was primarily searching for C-levelpositions – and these positions are rarely posted on these sites – it did not make sense in my case. Your mileagewill vary depending on the type of position you want.

As you can see, these elements were all tightly integrated, providing the desired compounding effect. A fewspecific comments/tips on some of these components:

The purpose of constantly tweaking the LinkedIn profile is not only to ensure it is accurate and powerful – it isalso to take advantage of a key feature of LinkedIn. Basically, whenever someone updates their profile, peoplein their network (connections) are notified. But these notifications are only seen if that connection happens tobe looking at their LinkedIn home page (which most people do only sporadically). Therefore, to ensure yourprofile is noticed more often, it is a good idea to be continuously updating it. (As with all marketing strategies,this can be carried too far however. Use common sense – updates should be meaningful.)

The value of professionally printing and binding resumes cannot be overstated. Even if someone already has aprinted version of your resume on their desk, it always looks professional to “formally” present a good lookingdocument that describes your value.

It goes without saying that a key element of my approach was always to be extremely well-prepared for anyin-person discussions I would have with a company. It would not be unusual for me to spend two or three actualdays studying and even doing an unrequested “project” for a company in order to prove my knowledge andimmediate value. As an example, if I was potentially being considered as a Chief Marketing Officer for a particularcompany and I noticed in my due diligence review that their positioning on their website was fuzzy, I would workon a “Positioning Project” for them. During my two-month job search I estimate that I did over $10k of free“consulting work” for the various companies I spoke to, but the result was that I always stood far apart of mostother candidates in terms of demonstrating both my relevant knowledge as well as my spirit. Of course, all thesereports were professionally bound as well.

As with all social media, and marketing in general, we must remain flexible and ready to shift strategy asnecessary. This occurred during my compound job search with respect to the Compound Marketing LinkedIngroup I started. While it initially seemed like a good idea, it soon became apparent that LinkedIn groups requirelarge membership (thousands of members) to have any level of real activity, and only the most generic of topics


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can attract that many members. Compound Marketing is just too specific a topic to attract the volume necessary.Therefore, I decided to close the group after a month or so. I was not at all disturbed by this development as it isalways critical to be ready to fail early, learn, and move on.

This may all sound like common sense, but I will tell you that it is a very tiny minority of job searchers who areactually taking this approach today. In my experience as a hiring manager, having hired hundreds of people in mycareer, many of them high paying Director level positions and above, I have very rarely come across anyone whohas even come close to taking such a compound approach. Yes it does take time and effort, but your career is notjust a hobby – it is how you will be spending most of your waking hours and how you will earn the money youneed for the rest of those hours.

[As an aside, I recently read an excellent article about strategies for finding a job in silicon valley. Highlyrecommended.]

And now for the result: in mid-January I accepted the position of Chief Products Officer at Mindjet (the makers ofMindManager, the popular suite of information mapping software). Mindjet is a great company with a greatproduct set that bridges both cloud and desktop. As the CPO, I have product management, product marketing,user experience, development and IT/operations reporting to me. Interestingly, this will be the first time in a longtime that I will not have brand/demand-gen marketing reporting to me but I am excited by the opportunity toapply the principles of compound marketing to the very wide domain I am now responsible for.

Now some of you might be thinking, “so you are telling me that all this Compound Marketing stuff is nothingmore than a trick in order to find yourself a job?” I have three answers to this. First, my use of a compoundmarketing strategy in my job search is no more a “trick” than any marketer’s use of marketing’s methods aretrying to “trick” the market. Marketing is not about fooling people – it is about ensuring that the right match ismade between buyer and seller. Second, my efforts related to promoting and explaining the concept of compoundmarketing are very real and, I believe, add value to the domain of marketing in general.

Finally, and most importantly of all, I fully intend to keep going with this compound marketing blog, my twitterfeed, and other related initiatives. As I noted above, I will no longer put myself in a position where my personalbrand is solely amplified by a company’s megaphone. In the world of social media and compound marketing, weall have the ability to have our own voice and allow the power of community to amplify it.

Besides, I believe strongly in the principles of compound marketing – they clearly worked for me in my compoundjob search. I could not have found a better position at a better company to work for. Put in the effort and I’m sureyou will also have as much luck in your future compound job searching endeavors!

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in Compound, Job search, LinkedIn, Mathieu, Mind map | 3 Comments

What is Compound Marketing – Part 2Posted on January 4, 2011 by Blaine Mathieu


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Subtitle: It’s a lot more than you think

Early in the life of this blog I took a whack at defining the core concept of compound marketing. My first posting(“What the Heck is Compound Marketing”) said that “like a compound [archery] bow, the elements of onlinemarketing can and must work together to produce a higher impact than they could individually.”

Later I developed the thesis that compound marketing is not just another way of saying “integrated marketing.” Ina blog posting I made the basic point that “integrated marketing strategies are often done in a stepwise fashion,but compound marketing is about activities being completed and channels being used concurrently.”

As all this was going on, it began to occur strongly to me that I needed to be careful that the definition of“marketing” I was using was not too restrictive. A lot of the focus of discussions in marketing circles is actually onthe promotion and communication aspects of marketing – not on the bigger picture. In his ebook on The StrategicRole of Product Management, product management/marketing guru Steve Johnson makes the strong case that“marketing” is about a lot more than the 4 Ps. Philip Kotler, the sage of marketing who has trained generations ofmarketers via his ubiquitous university textbooks defines marketing management as “the art and science ofchoosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, andcommunicating customer value.”

Let’s pick that apart for a second. Marketers must choose target markets. Makes sense. But Kotler tells us thatthey are not only responsible for “getting” (new) customers but also for keeping and growing (nurturing) existingones. Finally, marketers are not only responsible for communicating customer value, but also for creating anddelivering it. That’s what the concept of compound marketing is really all about.

This big picture view of a marketer’s responsibilities is not new but it does require a whole set of interconnected(compounded) skills, practices, and tools. It involves driving the creation and delivery of the “whole product” (thegeneric/core product supplemented by all necessary related products and services) while simultaneously andsuccessfully navigating the communications mix (including advertising/branding, sales promotion, community,PR, direct marketing, events, and personal selling – to name a few).

In fact, there is even more to it than that. Marketers also have to drive a deep understanding of thecustomer/market. They need to create business models and set pricing. And they need to manage distributionchannels.

Wow! It might look something like this:

Now you might say “that’s not Marketing’s job.” It may not be the Marketing department’s job at your company,but these are the jobs of a compound marketer (no matter what your official job title or department is). Are you upto the task of driving compound marketing?

The good news is that the connected nature of strategic marketing in the cloud is making this complexundertaking more realistic and achievable than ever before. As I discussed in my cloud marketing posting, “thebottom line is that cloud computing will, by its very nature, enable the connections that compound marketersincreasingly require.” As people, businesses, channels, and markets connect via the Web, and as the tools and


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Pentax K10D - ready for Africa!

solutions for market research, communications, andproduct delivery (both physical and virtual) areincreasingly connected, savvy compound marketerswill take advantage of this to find new, efficient, andprofitable ways to create value.

For a stream of ideas, strategies, and tactics for doingjust that, please do follow the CompoundMktg twitterfeed.

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in Cloud computing, Compound, Integrated | 2 Comments

Happy Compound Marketing Holidays from Nigeria!Posted on December 17, 2010 by Blaine Mathieu

It seems like Western countries aren’t the only ones full of marketers trying to drive effective compoundmarketing strategies. Let me give you the abbreviated version of what transpired today.

So I’m trying to sell my barely used Pentax digital SLR and zoom lens.(Unfortunately I never found the time to learn about all those f-stops, etc. – Iguess I have to stick with my Panasonic Lumix for now.) I decided to useCraigslist as I normally would for such things.

In the wee hours last night I received the following email:

Hello Blaine.I think the price of your Pentax K10D camera kit plus Tamron 18-250mmlens is okay for me. I would love to purchase it for my son who is in Africa forhis international studies as a surprise package for I know it will be a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS SURPRISEPACKAGE to him. However, I reside in #16 Harvard Street Nashua, New Hampshire.I would love to see the package locally and pay for it BUT due to distance and the nature of my work as anaccountant, I have a tight job schedule and am always busy all day. I will send you a total of $700 to cover forthe package and for the shipment cost/insurance to him through USPS EXPRESS MAIL, directly to Africa.Please send me your PayPal request. And please write on the box: “A SURPRISE CHRISTMAS PACKAGE FROMMOM!”Edna

So I sent the PayPal request for $700 and soon received an email from “PayPal” telling me that the money hadbeen transferred and was in my account. At this point I was getting ready to box up the camera when I thoughtthat maybe I better actually LOOK at the account to confirm the money is there. Sure enough, no money.


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The omniscient Marketing Technologist

My next email to “Edna” told her that I would send her the camera if/when I actually got the money in myaccount. Shortly after this, “PayPal” sent me another email notifying me that they would release the money assoon as I emailed them the tracking number for the package that I had sent. From a certain perspective, thismakes some sense as it truly would ensure that both sides of the transaction are acting in good faith.

Fortunately I was aware that PayPal doesn’t work this way and so I didn’t fall for this scam. But I wonder whatpercentage of people would actually send the goods based on the email from “PayPal” without actually checkingtheir account? My guess is, a pretty decent percentage would “trust” the email channel and not bother to check –especially if they were doing all this via a mobile device which is increasingly likely.

My last email to “Edna” was to congratulate him/her on a well-played scam. While I would never endorse the ideaof marketers deceiving their prospects, I do have to admit that this was a very well-executed compound marketingcampaign making full use of Craigslist, PayPal, and email in a very tightly integrated manner.

And now I still have my Pentax for sale!

Blaine Mathieu

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The Rise and Fall of the Marketing TechnologistPosted on December 15, 2010 by Blaine Mathieu

Being a digital marketer has never been easy, and in the world of compound marketing it’s potentially even morecomplicated. Leveraging multiple channels usually means trying to make numerous applications work togethersimultaneously, not just to drive connected campaigns but also to measure them. On that note, I recently tweetedabout an article arguing that marketers must be aware of the strength of their applications’ APIs, so they canensure powerful connections between applications.

I’m a technologist at heart and therefore I enjoy talking feeds-and-speeds, whether an application’s APIs are RESTful or not, andwhich front-end technology is being used for the user interface – asmuch as the next geek. (Over the holidays my reading list includesthree books on the hot web framework Ruby on Rails.) But thereality is that truly powerful digital marketing will only reach themainstream when the associated applications, tools, and services donot require “marketing technologists” to run them.

Now here’s the good news: I believe we are almost there. Less than adecade ago I dramatically improved the ROI of a marketingdepartment by bringing in so-called “best of breed” tools to enablemarketing initiatives across multiple channels. To do that I had toset the company’s team of IT professionals to work integrating them


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together (as best they could) and, even after that, I was still basically the only person in the company who couldnavigate the complexity of this system. The results were positive for the company, but it was a painful experienceall the way around.

Today, digital marketers drive compound marketing strategies in the cloud and the integrated tools are finallycoming around to make that happen. There are two primary approaches being taken by software vendors: the“everything inside” approach in which functionality is tightly integrated into a single system, and the “openintegration” approach in which the primary strategy is to integrate with many external systems. Today, the“everything inside” approach has more likelihood of providing a single, consistent data model and user experiencebut, in the long run, the open approach will probably prevail. In either case, many highly connected solutions arenow actually usable by real marketers that do not require IT departments (or even marketing technologists).

So if you are a marketing technologist: beware. Your days as the indispensible technical expert using bailing wireand binder twine to hold the organization’s marketing systems together are numbered. And good riddance – it’stime for the best marketing (and marketers) to take the lead and for technology to assume its rightful place as animportant supporting player, not the primary driver, of marketing effectiveness.

[For a detailed understanding of the concept of the marketing technologist, I recommend you take a look at thisarticle. While I agree with many of its points, I disagree with the basic premise that the solution to drivingeffective marketing is for companies to actually formalize the role of the marketing technologist. To the extent thathas to happen, software and solution vendors have failed the marketers they serve.]

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in API, Cloud computing, Complexity, Integrated | 1 Comment

Compound Marketers are Cloud MarketersPosted on December 10, 2010 by Blaine Mathieu

Dreamforce conferences, put on by “enterprise cloud computing company” Salesforce.com, are always incredibleevents. Not only are they some of the best-executed shows put on by any software vendor, but I always leave themwith new insights regarding the future of sales and marketing, enterprise applications, the Internet, andcomputing in general. The show this year was no exception.

The major thought I left with, this time around, was that cloud computing truly is one of the major drivers behindthe advent of compound marketing practices. Bear with me while I build out this thesis a bit.

Now I realize that most of my readers are marketers, not technologists, and may not have a strong foundation inwhat cloud computing is, so let me digress a bit. Wikipedia defines cloud computing as “Internet-basedcomputing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices ondemand, as with the electricity grid. … Details are abstracted from consumers [marketers], who no longer haveneed for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure ‘in the cloud’ that supports them.” If you havea bit of time on your hands, read the entire Wikipedia entry – this is the future of computing after all!


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So, in a nutshell, cloud computing combines the simplicity and power of applications on demand, in a highlyconnected fashion. Here is a conceptual diagram of a cloud computing ecosystem (source: the wikipedia article):

Cloud computing conceptual diagram

Notice something interesting here? Doesn’t this diagram look conceptually similar to the concept I introduced inmy recent blog post “Mapping the Compound Marketing cloud”? By powerfully interconnecting disparate webservices and applications, cloud computing enables the effective interconnection of multiple marketing channels.That’s what compound marketing is all about.

For those that are interested in a slightly more technical take on the components of cloud computing “layers” andwhy it is ushering in an era of smarter, cheaper, more abundant applications, I recommend this recent blog postby venture capitalist Mark Suster. It’s fairly short and very readable.

The bottom line is that cloud computing will, by its very nature, enable the connections that compound marketers(and knowledge workers in general) increasingly require. Simultaneously it will alleviate the need for thesemarketers to become “marketing technologists” – more on this topic in the future. For now, I recommend you payattention to cloud computing and insist that the systems you use are as connected as you require your marketinginitiatives to be.

UPDATE 1/2/2011: Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.net, recently wrote a great article on the future of IT and cloudcomputing. Very readable and highly recommended.

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in Cloud computing, Compound, Mind map | 3 Comments

Mapping the Compound Marketing cloudPosted on December 8, 2010 by Blaine Mathieu

I just returned from Dreamforce and I have a hard case of “clouds on the brain”. Overall it’s a good thing. For


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those that attended (especially those that walked the show floor) it is easy to see how multi-channel compoundmarketing is being connected in very powerful ways to salesforce enablement tools to literally create a “compoundsales and marketing” ecosystem. Any B2B marketer that is not seriously looking at how to use and connectmodern marketing automation (i.e., Eloqua, Marketo, etc.) and salesforce enablement (i.e., Salesforce, MicrosoftDynamics CRM, etc.) tools together is putting his or her company at a serious competitive disadvantage.

But more on that topic in the future. For now I wanted to write a brief note reflecting on a littleresearch/consulting project I embarked on lately. Basically, I completed a detailed assessment of the “mindmapping” tool space. (Stick with me – you will see how this is relevant to marketing.) For those that are notfamiliar, mind maps are diagrams that visually represent connections and relationships, usually used in thecontext of unstructured data. Some of the more popular products that enable mind mapping (or relatedfunctionality) in a business context include:

FreeMindiMindMap 4MindGenius 3MindManager 9MindMapper 2009MindView 4Personal Brain 6Visual Mind 11

After reviewing each of these in detail – including actually creating mind maps in each one – I have come to theconclusion that MindManager 9 (from Mindjet) is the strongest of the bunch for most use-cases. Besides beingvery feature-rich (there is basically nothing in the domain that it can’t do) it also has, by far, the best communityof users built up around it. In this world of social connections the strength of a product is measured as much bythe ecosystem of supporters around it as it is by the product itself. With well-frequented user-forums, a Maps forThat! site full of maps that users have already created and want to share, as well as frequent webinars andtrainings, I believe that MindManager is the best “whole product” out there. It also has the most advanced onlinecollaboration functionality which easily allows distributed teams to create and manage their mind maps.

So why does all this matter to the compound marketer? Well, as we know, compound marketing is all aboutsimultaneously leveraging the complex connections between multiple marketing channels. In working with clientsand in my own businesses, one of the challenges I have long found in creating a compound marketing strategy isenabling the many stakeholders, across various siloed marketing domains, to collaborate in the creation of such aconnected strategy. A tool like MindManager is designed to not only enable this kind of strategic collaboration inreal time, but it also allows the strategy to be visualized in the most meaningful way. Let me give you an overlysimplified example.

An “integrated” marketing strategy to drive revenue for a B2B company might look like this:

Generate leads:

PPC campaigns


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WebinarsYouTubeFacebookTradeshows

Nurture leads

EmailTwitterWebinars

Close deals

Phone call

This is a perfectly viable integrated approach in which a lead is generated, then is nurtured, and finally the deal isclosed in a waterfall fashion. But we all know that marketing doesn’t actually work like this in the real world. Thecompound marketing version of this strategy is best expressed in a mind map such as the following:

Click image to view full size

This simplified map shows (some of) the relationships between the elements of the marketing strategy. Ratherthan being sequential, many of them affect and interact with the others in feedback loops. Admittedly this looks abit more complicated than the sequential approach but it enables meaningful discussion and planning aroundwhat will make this a truly powerful compound marketing strategy. The next version of the mind map could blowthese relationships/connections out into more detail including the creation of action plans – with timelines andGantt charts – to drive the strategy into the tactical execution phase.

Whether you use Mindjet’s MindManager, or other tools, to do this, I highly recommend that marketers make useof this powerful method of collaborating on and visualizing your compound marketing initiatives. Until nexttime…

Update February 2011: Full disclosure, as a result of my due diligence I have accepted the position of ChiefProducts Officer at Mindjet. At the time I wrote this posting back in December I was not part of the company andwas doing an assessment to ensure the products were good. I thought so back then and I (obviously) still do sonow. I’m excited to take on the challenge of driving Mindjet’s product and go-to-market strategies using theprinciples of Compound Marketing! This blog will continue.

Blaine Mathieu


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Posted in B2B, Cloud computing, Compound, Mind map | 1 Comment

Mariner of the Compound Marketing SeasPosted on November 30, 2010 by Blaine Mathieu

I just returned from a cruise to Mexico aboard the Mariner of the Seas by RCI. Until a couple years ago, this wasthe biggest cruise ship in the world (RCI now has an even bigger one). The Mariner holds approximately 3,500passengers and about 1,200 crewmembers. My family and I had a great time and I would highly recommend it ifyou are looking for an absolutely no-stress vacation.

If you haven’t done so already, do take a look at the interactive map of the ship. Amenities include an ice skatingrink, a full-size basketball court, and an indoor mall with multiple stores and restaurants (including JohnnyRockets). This is not a boat – this is basically a small floating city. Wikipedia provides a few more statistics:

Her engines produce 56,000 horsepower consuming 2,871 gallons of fuel per hourElectricity generators produce 75 megawatts of powerThe ship creates 540,000 gallons of its own fresh water each dayThe kitchen produces over 105,000 meals each week

A cruise ship – especially one the size of the Mariner – is truly a self-contained ecosystem. The complexity of themachine is mind-boggling and, unlike a city, there is zero room for error on a ship. As proof, recall the CarnivalCruise that recently went bust when its systems failed. It was not only the ability of the ship to move that wascompromised, but virtually every interconnected system on board including the toilets and running water,cooking facilities, and electricity.

As I was enjoying the cruise, I couldn’t help but think about analogies between the ship and the concept ofcompound marketing:

The ship is a highly complex machine but most of that complexity is hidden – not only from the passengers buteven from the crew that runs the machine. Similarly, the tools of compound online marketing are technically


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advanced but the best ones use that high technology to make their operation fairly simple – otherwise truecompound marketing would be difficult if not impossible to achieve in the real world.

Ship systems must function simultaneously. Meals are being served, electricity is being generated, courses arebeing plotted and executed, and shows are being performed around the clock and often concurrently. Thebeauty of a ship like this is the customer is rarely, if ever, waiting for something. The orchestration necessaryto carry this all out is a wonder to behold, but the result is a customer experience second to none. That’s thekind of relevant, timely, and orchestrated experience that compound marketers need to present to their clientsand prospects as well.

Although the ship has the capability of being practically self-contained (at least for a few weeks at a time), thepassengers also want to get off occasionally and experience the world beyond. The ship and its creworchestrate these external interactions as well, ensuring the right balance between internal control (to ensuresafety and enjoyment) while also enabling freedom and adventure via external vendors. Compound marketersalso want to create complete (multi-channel) marketing programs for prospects but the reality of the web isthat people cannot be restricted. Like the cruise, they need to feel that they can leave when they need to butwant to return because the offering (value) is so compelling.

And that’s my take – after only a few Mai Tai’s – about how my cruise and the concept of compound marketinghad a lot in common. Anyone had a similar experience? Or perhaps you were on a cruise that had the ultimateun-compound experience!

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in Complexity, Compound, Integrated | Leave a comment

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compromised, but virtually every interconnected system on board including the toilets and running water,cooking facilities, and electricity.

As I was enjoying the cruise, I couldn’t help but think about analogies between the ship and the concept ofcompound marketing:

The ship is a highly complex machine but most of that complexity is hidden – not only from the passengers buteven from the crew that runs the machine. Similarly, the tools of compound online marketing are technicallyadvanced but the best ones use that high technology to make their operation fairly simple – otherwise truecompound marketing would be difficult if not impossible to achieve in the real world.

Ship systems must function simultaneously. Meals are being served, electricity is being generated, courses arebeing plotted and executed, and shows are being performed around the clock and often concurrently. Thebeauty of a ship like this is the customer is rarely, if ever, waiting for something. The orchestration necessaryto carry this all out is a wonder to behold, but the result is a customer experience second to none. That’s thekind of relevant, timely, and orchestrated experience that compound marketers need to present to their clientsand prospects as well.

Although the ship has the capability of being practically self-contained (at least for a few weeks at a time), thepassengers also want to get off occasionally and experience the world beyond. The ship and its creworchestrate these external interactions as well, ensuring the right balance between internal control (to ensuresafety and enjoyment) while also enabling freedom and adventure via external vendors. Compound marketersalso want to create complete (multi-channel) marketing programs for prospects but the reality of the web isthat people cannot be restricted. Like the cruise, they need to feel that they can leave when they need to butwant to return because the offering (value) is so compelling.

And that’s my take – after only a few Mai Tai’s – about how my cruise and the concept of compound marketinghad a lot in common. Anyone had a similar experience? Or perhaps you were on a cruise that had the ultimateun-compound experience!

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in Complexity, Compound, Integrated | Leave a comment

How is Compound Marketing different than “integrated marketing”?Posted on November 19, 2010 by blainemathieu

As a former VP of Marketing in high technology and former CMO at an online marketing solutions provider, I’vespent years thinking about, experimenting with, using, and evangelizing the concept of “integrated marketing”.Some examples here, here, here, and here.

In preparing for this new blog, and its associated LinkedIn group and twitter feed I was scratching my head tryingto figure out why the word “integrated” was just not doing it for me any longer. And then the vision of a compound

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bow came into my mind and it immediately crystallized for me where the concept of integration falls short (as doother similar ways of thinking about the concept). Here is why the compound bow analogy works for me:

When a compound bow is drawn back, all the pieces move simultaneously. The cams, wheels, pulleys, limbs,strings, and cables all move in unison – not one after the other or as part of a cycle. Integrated marketingstrategies are often done in a stepwise fashion, but compound marketing is about activities being completedand channels being used concurrently.Although many newer compound bows are beginning to look like something out of a science fiction movie,they are ultimately very simple machines. This reminds me of how many of the newer online marketingpractices – like social media and mobile marketing – can seem fairly complex on initial consideration but thebasic principles are actually very simple and well-understood.The ultimate goal of using a compound bow is to hit a precise target with maximum force while expending theminimum amount of effort possible. In marketing speak this translates to: precisely targeted and relevantmessages delivering the highest return on investment.

If you haven’t seen how a compound bow actually works in real life, next time you are in the sporting goods store,ask someone to demo it for you – it is really a thing of beauty.

Unrelated to the bow analogy, I also like the associated concept of “compound interest”. Using compoundmarketing is all about leveraging multiple channels and initiatives. The result is you getting back more than youput in – just like the banks (used to) give us. Of course, using these channels separately can also provide a goodreturn. But those who actually use the principles of compound marketing do even better. (I’ll save the “Principlesof Compound Marketing” for a future posting.)

In short, the concept of “marketing integration” is great but, for me, it doesn’t evoke the essence of trulysynergistic and powerful marketing nearly as effectively as the notion of “compound marketing”.

Do the “compound” analogies work for you? Where are they strong and where do they falter? I’d love to hear youropinions.

Blaine Mathieu

Posted in Compound, Integrated, LinkedIn | Leave a comment

Welcome! And what the heck is Compound Marketing?Posted on November 15, 2010 by blainemathieu

Welcome to the Compound Marketing blog! For experienced online marketers, Compound Marketing is the placeto learn and discuss specific ideas for how online marketing channels produce higher impact results whencompounded together.

Thesaurus.com defines the verb “compound” as to “mix, combine, amalgamate, associate, blend, coalesce,connect, couple, fuse, intermingle, join, link, meld, synthesize, and unite”. When starting this blog, I couldn’t


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think of a better word to bring out the true sense of integrating multiple online marketing channels. Like acompound bow, the elements of online marketing can and must work together to produce a higher impact thanthey could individually.

Not a front for a company or product – the Compound Marketing blog is created by real marketers for realmarketers. Experts from industry vendors are allowed to participate in discussions but no selling allowed – ever.

The Compound Marketing blog is run by Blaine Mathieu, a recognized expert in integrated, multi-channelmarketing. Blaine is an accomplished consultant, speaker and panelist at numerous marketing and technologyindustry events and relevant webinars, and has held successful executive marketing positions in recognized hightechnology brands such as Gartner, Adobe, Corel, and Lyris.

Follow the writings here if you are interested in saving time and money by staying on the cutting edge of onlinemarketing practices without having to invent them yourself. Stay a step (or two) ahead of your competitors bydiscovering and uncovering the secrets of the emerging practice of Compound Marketing. Let’s get started!

Blaine Mathieu

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