Neil Ruffolo, Director, Digital Strategy

Finding Your Way Beyond “Best Practices” — An Agile Marketing Crash Course

Does it feel like you are always chasing the leader in your category? Your team has all the bases covered and boxes checked, including search engine marketing, social media, email automation and video content. And the quality is first rate. Yet year-in and year-out you are still in reactionary mode, trying to beat the champ using the best practices they probably pioneered in your industry. To gain ground and win big you need to play by a different set of rules. That means ditching your dependence on imitation in favor of [...]

Finding Your Way Beyond “Best Practices” — An Agile Marketing Crash CourseNeil Ruffolo2021-11-17T09:51:22-06:00

How to See Beyond the Martech Hype from the Top of Mt. Stupid

There is nothing new under the sun. In my experience, most things touted as totally new are a natural evolution of what came before. And in the field of marketing technology – or martech – there is no shortage of examples. The Thomas Register may still live on as ThomasNet, but it’s hard to argue that traditional supplier directories were not bushwhacked by Alibaba and general purpose search engines like Google. SEO is likewise the technological descendent of naming your business AAA Precision Tool to gain the top spot in an [...]

How to See Beyond the Martech Hype from the Top of Mt. StupidNeil Ruffolo2021-11-17T10:55:00-06:00

3 Ways AI Can Translate Marketing Speak Into a Language Every Exec Understands

I like to use idiomatic expressions with my kids. A few simple words can convey wisdom and provoke thought about important things. Take for example “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” This saying opens the door to ponder things like ambition, risk, envy, and gratitude. One of my favorites is “Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees” to warn against the pitfalls of focusing on parts without considering them together as a whole. And to avoid the opposite extreme I will remind them that [...]

3 Ways AI Can Translate Marketing Speak Into a Language Every Exec UnderstandsNeil Ruffolo2021-11-17T10:59:52-06:00

The Answer Is Yes. Amazon Will Disrupt Your Industry Too

A looming challenge for your distributors could be a rare chance to gain a competitive advantage for your brand. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency illusion, happens when something that you recently became aware of starts popping up everywhere. This happened to one of our clients following an annual planning session when we raised the topic of Amazon Business. Even before catching a flight out of Chicago he forwarded two news items supporting the idea that eventually every manufacturer will be impacted by the e-commerce juggernaut. All of a sudden Amazon Business [...]

The Answer Is Yes. Amazon Will Disrupt Your Industry TooNeil Ruffolo2021-11-22T16:39:59-06:00

About Neil Ruffolo

Finding Your Way Beyond “Best Practices” — An Agile Marketing Crash Course

How to See Beyond the Martech Hype from the Top of Mt. Stupid

3 Ways AI Can Translate Marketing Speak Into a Language Every Exec Understands

The Answer Is Yes. Amazon Will Disrupt Your Industry Too