Hi, I'm John Balla - I co-founded the SAS Customer Intelligence blog and served as Editor for five years. I held a number of marketing roles at SAS as Content Strategist, Industry Field Marketing and as Go-to-Marketing Lead for our Customer Intelligence Solutions. I like to find and share content and experiences that open doors, answer questions, and sometimes challenge assumptions so better questions can be asked. Outside of work I am an avid downhill snow skier, hiker and beach enthusiast. I stay busy with my family, volunteering for civic causes, 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 get by with 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.
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
