Authentic Brand Blog - Marketing Insights for Growing Businesses

A business guide to marketing leadership models

How does a fractional CMO compare to interim CMOs and strategic consultants? You know you need marketing leadership: someone to move your go-to-market strategy forward, guide your team, and integrate activities. While the requirements of the role might be straightforward, the solution is often anything but. How do you define the ideal fit for your organization in a world of increasingly diverse and flexible marketing leadership options? Finding the right answer for your business begins with a clear understanding of various marketing engagement models, leadership responsibilities, and commitment…

Demand Generation 101: Build a foundation for a strong program

Small and growing businesses are often laser-focused on demand generation. They want more “at-bats,” or opportunities, for their sales team. But demand generation isn’t as simple as putting your company’s message out into the marketplace. Demand generation is the process of creating brand awareness with relevant, targeted stakeholder groups (i.e., prospects) and then building on this awareness by nurturing prospects to create new revenue opportunities. (more…)

What should growing businesses include in their entrepreneurial marketing plan?

We start many blog posts with a similar story because it resonates with the many businesses struggling to drive alignment, accountability, and activation in marketing: A business has ambitious ideas for its growth, but leadership hasn’t agreed on or documented a clear vision with achievable goals that the entire company understands. Downstream, this lack of clarity and direction leads marketing to develop a plan based on wishful, hypothesis-driven thinking. (more…)

Hire a marketing leader: A guide for business leaders

The task to hire the right marketing leader has become increasingly difficult. Growing businesses need experienced marketing direction, and they can’t afford to get this hire wrong. A bad hire in the marketing leadership role is not only painful from a talent turn-over and expense perspective, but it runs the risk of damaging the company’s overall brand reputation, culture, and revenue potential. This reality begs some important questions, which we’ll address in this Guide to hiring a marketing leader: Why is it so hard to hire a marketing…

Random Acts of Marketing Guide

It’s a story we hear all of the time: A business grew rapidly in its first years by focusing on sales and pursuing whichever opportunities came its way. Eventually, though, growth leveled off. The company needed to do something to jumpstart its sales and fuel its next-level growth. Executives recognized it was time to invest in marketing. (more…)

An open letter in recognition of a deserving leader. Meg Van Sloun promoted to Chief Operating Officer of Authentic Brand.

Meg Van Sloun (L), Authentic Brand COO, with Jennifer Zick (R), Authentic Brand CEO MINNEAPOLIS, MN – June 10, 2021 I had planned to craft a formal press release to announce Meg Van Sloun's promotion to Chief Operating Officer for Authentic Brand. But before I drafted the public announcement, I first shared a letter with our internal team. And then I realized that I want to share with all of YOU just how truly grateful I am for Meg, and how excited I am for her and for…

Transformational tech marketer, Peter Zaballos, joins Authentic Brand as Fractional CMO

A seasoned Chief Marketing Officer, board leader and venture capitalist, Zaballos accelerates SaaS companies (and race cars). MINNEAPOLIS, MN - June 9, 2021 Authentic Brand continues expansion of its national fractional CMO team with the addition of Peter Zaballos, a Chief Marketing Officer with a reputation for building brands that disrupt the technology landscape and fundamentally change the world. Zaballos' career includes past roles with LSI Logic, C-Cube Microsystems and RealNetworks: companies that changed the landscape of computing and launched Zaballos' passion for transformational technology and rapid-growth entrepreneurial…

What’s to come with corporate events? 4 Considerations for Business Leaders

Many of the businesses we work with at Authentic Brand have long relied on traditional, paid corporate events to increase brand awareness and support business development efforts. Nearly every Authentic Brand client has (or had) a line item for events on their budget. The future of corporate events and their role in a company’s marketing strategy got thrown into question in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic halted all travel and in-person events. Some businesses quickly, nimbly, and effectively pivoted in-person events to virtual ones, while others canceled…

How to Harness Trust to Build Brand Equity and Grow Your Business

There is nothing more valuable to a business, its relationships, and its brand than the trust it creates and maintains with its stakeholders. Trust is your most valuable brand currency, one that builds on itself over time to increase your brand equity, the brand’s worth in and of itself. Companies with higher brand equity experience all types of financial benefits: greater profit margin and better customer acquisition and retention. Building brand equity through trust can be an overwhelming effort for company founders and CEOs. But as a business…

How Business Leaders Can Build a Personal Brand

Your personal brand is how you show up in the world personally and professionally. It extends beyond what you do for work to encompass deeper and more personal attributes, including your hobbies, passions, values, and beliefs. But too often, business leaders stop short of developing and sharing their authentic personal brand. Instead, they tie their personal brand exclusively to their employer’s brand, limiting it to what they do for work, who they work for, and the organization’s values. The trouble with this approach is that your brand isn’t…