Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered.com gives us a straight no bullshit (well, a little bullshit) talk on what makes a great CMO, new marketing tactics in 2010, where budgets are going, and how to be “social” on the web.  Aaron talks about marketing companies needing to actually “walk the walk” and provide relevant case studies to quantify things and muchos more.  Watch, learn something, and tell Aaron how cool he is!

Of course, you can get a kick ass education about all of this stuff over at Aaron’s blog: Here

More about Powered:

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We Build Successful Online Communities

At Powered, we take a unique approach to creating branded online communities. We call this approach, “social marketing” because we focus on helping marketers build results-driven programs based on the right combination of strategy, expert and consumer generated content, world class social tools and ongoing management. Most importantly, we measure numerous key performance indicators that allow us to evolve and optimize these programs, leading to significant business outcomes – in some cases, returns on investment (ROI) as high as 60:1.

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A vital component to Powered programs is our ability to assist brands in reaching their customers during every stage of the buying cycle by supporting long engagement sessions and offering a range of customer interaction tools. The dialog and interactions that take place in a Powered community serve multiple marketing purposes throughout a consumer’s recurring experiences with a brand to help them engage consumers to garner insight and innovation, create brand loyalists and passionate advocates and drive purchase consideration, purchase conversion and demonstrable ROI. We work with some of the world’s leading brands such as Atkins, Sony, HP, RadioShack and iVillage and have a proven track record of producing tangible business results such as:

  • 75% visitors remain active in our communities year over year
  • 10% visitor response rates to surveys and polls
  • 12 minutes is the average time on site per visitor
  • 1.5 million registered users across our communities
  • 92% members recommend the community to friends
  • 85% members recommend the brand to friends
  • 74% visitors report they are more likely to purchase the brand’s products
  • 20% visitors report purchasing from the brand
  • 60:1 average program ROI

Why We Are Different

While there are numerous ghost-town examples of communities in the marketplace, Powered clients typically see from tens to hundreds of thousands of visitors reporting purchases and higher likelihood to recommend the brand as a result of their community experience. What sets Powered apart from other providers is that we are a full-service community provider that offers:

  • Program Strategy and Management – Powered defines the right community strategy to achieve your marketing objectives and meet the needs of your audience
  • Content – Powered develops expert content that drives audience engagement and dialog by putting the customer first
  • Measurement and Analytics – Powered delivers insightful program analytics to inform and optimize your digital marketing strategy
  • Community Design and Implementation – Powered provides ongoing planning, execution and community optimization as standard practice
  • Integrated Social Marketing Platform – Powered leverages our leading-edge, integrated social marketing platform to enable community development, interaction and growth