U.S. Google searchers are searching far less than a year ago, according to a new Datos/SparkToro report. The data suggests Google isn’t losing users — it’s losing repeat searches. While Google still dominates search, it’s changing in significant ways. Fewer searches per user means fewer opportunities for clicks, ads and traffic — even if total …
Customer experience teams aren’t failing because they lack passion, tools, or data. They are failing because, when improvement stalls, they ask the wrong questions. Not bad questions. Not lazy questions. Familiar questions. Comfortable questions. Questions that keep CX safely in analysis mode while the real issues, i.e., power, priorities, incentives and behavior, go untouched. If …
Read more “10 signs your CX strategy is broken and how to fix it”
Measurement poses a challenge for many marketers, thanks to the explosion in marketing channels, the overwhelming amount of data in marketing today and the complicated relationships between marketing leaders and other C-suite executives. But how do marketers feel about their ability to measure their activities? Research says many marketers are happy with their measurement, but …
Read more “Struggling with marketing measurement? You’re not alone.”
Email and SMS didn’t undergo a seismic shift in 2025, but they did change in ways that materially affected performance and strategy. Three updates, in particular, reshaped how messages are delivered, displayed and engaged with across email and SMS campaigns: Apple’s iOS 18.2 rollout. Gmail’s “Manage subscriptions” feature. Apple’s iOS 26 update introduced an “unknown sender” …
Read more “What Apple and Google’s 2025 updates mean for email and SMS in 2026”
Over the last decade, the volume of signal flowing through GTM has changed completely. Google searches now exceed 5 million a minute. Social posts top 500,000 a minute. Video creation has grown 10x, with more than 500 new hours uploaded every minute. AI accelerated this shift by making nearly everyone a creator. When signals reach …
With all the hype around AI, it should be no surprise that I’ve run into many less tech-savvy marketing team members who think AI does everything now. However, there are limitations to its capabilities, and wise marketers will combine AI’s capabilities with their existing technology to — as the mechanic’s motto dictates — use the …
Read more “Smart marketers set the rules before AI makes the calls”
Last month, I asked a VP of marketing how prospects were finding her company. “Organic search, some paid, a little social,” she said. I opened ChatGPT and entered a query that her ideal customer would use: “Best customer data platforms for healthcare SaaS teams with small RevOps staff.” Her brand never surfaced. That gap matters …
Read more “How CMOs should think about discovery in an AI-first world”
The reason so many companies dispense with strategy during stable periods is not just complacency or success. It’s something more basic and more damaging: a fundamental misunderstanding of what strategy actually is. In business, strategy is routinely treated as a plan, a roadmap or a commitment to a single coherent line of action. It’s framed …
Read more “A marketer’s guide to what strategy is and isn’t”
OpenAI is officially in the ad business. And not just any ads — super-premium, top-shelf, $60-CPM ads. That’s the pricing territory of live NFL broadcasts, way above Meta’s sub-$20 CPM and miles from your average programmatic placement. The pitch? ChatGPT isn’t like Google or social media. It’s a new kind of environment, where advertisers reach …
Every few years, loyalty comes under renewed scrutiny. Customers are described as fickle. Switching costs are low. Attention spans are shrinking. The story is familiar: loyalty is no longer realistic in a digital, price-sensitive world. That framing is convenient and mostly wrong. Loyalty didn’t disappear. Brands diluted it — slowly, deliberately and often unintentionally — …
Read more “Loyalty didn’t disappear. Brands traded it away.”