All the recent buzz about Steve Jobs got me to thinking about some things lately.  I can't say that I have always been an early adopter, but I at least tend to stay near the leading edge of technology.

Hubspot's recent market survey on the state of Inbound Marketing for 2011 reveals some interesting trends in marketing spend validating the importance of inbound marketing as a low cost lead generator.  Consumers are becoming immune to uninvited communications and wish to be left to their own methods when going through the buying decision process.  It's about control, and the consumer is now the one who now has the power of choice in what information is received.

In my consulting endeavors for large companies, I have often observed disdain and sometimes even contention between marketing and IT.  Even though they both support the same common business objectives, it seems that neither one believes that they can be effective partners in the process.  And now with the move toward a higher concentration of digital marketing in the mix, IT believes that it should be the one in the driver's seat.  The real question here is:  who's driving the strategy?  And without a command directive from the supreme leader (i.e. CEO, President, etc.), strategy and tactics will go their own way churning up time, resources, and energy.

If you listen to marketers, you'll hear the mantra repeated about the face of marketing in today's world.  Now I could go on myself about this, but I came across an article from Jeffrey Gitomer about this very topic.  If you don't subscribe to his sales ranting newsletter, I highly recommend it.  Many times he talks about back to the basics topics, but we find that a lot of our clients benefit by reviewing the basics of their business, especially when considering a new website.