Hi, I'm John Balla - a Digital Marketing Principal here at SAS focused on Content Strategy. I co-founded the SAS Customer Intelligence blog and served as Editor for five years. I like to find and share content and experiences that open doors, answer questions and maybe even challenge assumptions so better questions can be asked. Outside of work I stay busy with my wife and I keeping up with my 2 awesome college-age kids, volunteering for the Boy Scouts, keeping my garden green, striving for green living, expressing myself with puns, and making my own café con leche every morning. I’ve lived and worked on 3 contents and can communicate fluently in Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and passable English. Prior to SAS, my experience in marketing ranges from Fortune 100 companies to co-founding two start ups. I studied economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and got an MBA from Georgetown. Follow me on Twitter. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Considering the large investment every organization makes in people, the impact of hiring and retaining talent can’t be overstated. With the pace of change facing most marketing organizations, what I see specifically is the need to find and retain people that are innovative, agile and anything but complacent. A tall order?
As technology has changed the way people communicate, do business and generally lead their lives, CMOs have shifted their strategies to lead data-driven marketing in ways that maximize new opportunities and mitigate new risks. As the second in a two-part blog post, I’m sharing the recurring themes I’ve taken away
Technology has dramatically changed the way people communicate, do business and generally lead their lives. It’s increasingly online, and it’s increasingly mobile. In turn, those technologies have created tons of data-driven marketing opportunities, and it turns out that there are some recurring themes in how CMOs are leading the charge. Big
I have a challenge for you - guess which of these three email offers below are what I consider "sloppy marketing." Base your decision on these demographics- the recipient is a 50-year old married male with two kids at home, has stable employment, is a homeowner with a good credit rating, active
Who doesn't love a side-by-side taste test? You get to choose for yourself - awesome! For me, the ultimate taste test is the Pepsi Challenge (Pepsi Cola vs. Coca-Cola), a key feature of the "Cola Wars" since 1975. It's very simple and very effective - even for the audience. So for
It’s very telling that every Walmart greeter has an inviting phrase emblazoned across the back: “How may I help you?” That simple question and the presence of the greeters in the stores speaks eloquently to the customer-centricity of Walmart, which has been instilled in their organizational culture from the very
How do you feel when someone is talking at you? It's not quite the same as someone talking to you, is it? When someone talks to you, they might be using your language or even matching your rhythm. By contrast, someone talking at you seems like they're more interested in what they want to say and less on what you want to
Have you ever tried to find something quickly in a book? Say it's a book you've never read before - how do you approach it? You look first for the table of contents, right? We've all done it hundreds of times - if you scan the table of contents, you should quickly figure out what
The issue of data privacy has gotten a lot of attention lately, thanks in part to revelations by Edward Snowden and his kiss-and-tell with the press about several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs. It doesn't matter that this is not a new issue, nor that his revelations specifically
My wife often jokes about the early years of our marriage, when her perspective was "what's mine is mine and what's your's is mine." And my retort is usually, "I learned early to understand exactly who's the boss." Fortunately, it wasn't exactly like that, but we both agree we each started out
One of the most often repeated quotes in business is, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." It's attributed to the late management consultant Peter Drucker, and it's become so ingrained in business parlance that it's almost cliché. And people still say it for one simple reason - it's true. Even in
So many companies today describe themselves as "leading edge," or they strive to achieve excellence or market leadership. And we all have our own ideas of companies that are leading edge, as well as the companies that may once have been market leaders and for any number of reasons have
Marketing success in today's digital world requires a mix of art and science that involves both data-driven decision making and intuitive creativity to show how to improve your marketing. While marketing analytics have enabled the "scientific" side of marketing to evolve, it's also become apparent that creative thinkers working with the analytics are equally important.
With the rise of mobile devices, marketers have perhaps the most robust source of customer insight and consumer access that they’ve ever had. Handled properly, they will also have the ability provide the next generation of content, coupons and services for consumers. By 2014, mobile is projected to overtake desktop
How are you factoring devices into your marketing plan and approaches? As I think about what I am trying to accomplish and how that might change in the coming year, I find myself increasingly asking that question. Like all marketers today, I do my best to stay relevant to my audience
In my quest to address the opportunity of big data for marketers, I've had a chance to collaborate recently with Tamara Dull, a colleague who's an expert in this field and who is also super-creative. Perfect for marketing, right? Well, she developed a concept she calls "The Big Data Archipelago,"
Every once in a while I stop for a moment and consider how radically different marketing is today compared with just 3 years ago. Looking no further than my desk, it's quite amazing how my job has changed in just that short period of time. Previously, marketing seemed more an art
While traveling in Europe last month, I noticed that Coca-cola bottles were being sold with different peoples' names on them. I was intrigued enough to take a few pictures, and then I started looking for coke advertisements to see if I could pick up on a broader campaign. While it piqued my interest,
Marketing optimization has never been more critical because it's never been more important for marketers to know the decisions we make are the best ones. The need is driven by globalization, the accelerating pace of technological change, ever-scarcer resources, and so many other factors. In this environment, leading companies are increasingly
There are big opportunities in store for business in Brian Solis’ vision of the future, just as there are equally big opportunities for customers. They emanate from the importance of shared experiences, taking place with connected customers and which are fueled by great technologies. As is often the case, these
The future of business will require new success metrics. Since the future of business has been established by Brian Solis as being about shared experiences with connected customers enabled by great technologies, the next logical question might be whether or not those same technologies afford the ability to get new
Brian Solis has a vision of the future that involves shared experiences - many, many shared experiences. And his message for marketers is pretty clear - focus on shared experiences because that's what really matters. That's a pretty bold statement, but he backs it up with a rationale that's so simple and
Brian Solis of the Altimeter Group envisions a future brimming with potential, and a key part of his vision of the future are connected customers. These people are connected thanks to amazing technologies that enable the shared experience to take center stage, and for which new measures of success highlight many big opportunities. The connected
Brian Solis of the Altimeter Group has a compelling vision of the future - one which is replete with promise made possible by great technologies. But these great technologies come with a need to keep them in the right perspective (more on that below). In addition to great technologies, his vision of the future includes
When it comes to online customer data, marketers today have to balance a fine line between consumer privacy and effective marketing. The problem is that it’s quite easy for marketing to be intrusive, annoying and even creepy, so there is a risk that the abusers in our industry may prompt legislation
Today is Father’s Day in the United States, so as I did on Mother’s Day with advice from moms, I gathered fatherly advice from my coworkers, and my friends and colleagues in other organizations to see if I could relate the words of wisdom to marketers. For some, the dads have chosen to
Are you invisible or remarkable? That's the question that Seth Godin believes that marketers should ask themselves in the new economy and there are 3 simple reasons why: All media is now optional - no one is going to look at your tweet or open your junk mail unless they
Integrated marketing is a very broad view of marketing as a circular ecosystem that integrates people, processes and technologies in a process from concept/idea, through planning and resource allocation to execution, evaluation and analysis that feed back into ideas and planning. That definition comes from Gartner's "Magic Quadrant" report on Integrated Marketing Management.
Pharmaceutical companies (“Pharma”) operate in a very complex environment – to begin with, their customer is usually referred to as “the patient” and it gets more complicated from there. The relationship between Pharma and the patient is not always a direct one, and whether or not the customer is “delighted” often
Let me begin by saying that I am a huge fan of Linkedin. To folks who do not know LinkedIn, I always describe it as a "serious social network." When you are on LinkedIn, you post the equivalent of your résumé, add other details, join groups that are usually professionally-oriented and connect with
