Metrics. They're important to every marketer, and becoming even more so. We can only understand what we can measure, and we can only measure what we can provide analytics for.

Managing customers through a complex sales process can be challenging, especially in a technology sale, where there will always be multiple constituencies within the enterprise one is targeting. Getting "buy in" from all these parties is difficult enough, but what happens after you are successful in getting all the stakeholders on board? You have gotten to "yes" but, in many cases, the "what" to which these different parties have agreed might be dissimilar. For example, marketing will have a different understanding and goals than IT, and of course, we all know what the thoughts are of finance and accounting.

Be honest: do you know what you're doing with all of your data, or does it feel like it's just too much? If it's the latter, you're certainly not alone. As brands strive to determine what's influencing people to love, like, or share their brand, data has become more important than ever before. Very simply - data can impact sales.

Businesses without a customer service social media strategy put reputation and customer loyalty at risk.

The new year kicked off the announcement that Mark Cuban (read: guy with a basketball team, a crazy-good marketing blog, a failed bid for glory on "Dancing With the Stars," a Bieber haircut and plenty of disposable income) just sunk a little pocket change into a new CRM-du-jour flavor of the month. (Nimble.)

It's a new year and amid all the pundits telling us that this will be the year of the (fill in the blank, depending on who's doing the forecasting), it seems to me that online marketing may need to get back to basics for a while. No matter what other esoteric e-marketing techniques may be in style, to my mind, marketing in 2012 is still about two things: getting the customer to your website, and getting the customer to make a purchase there.

As technology continues to evolve and the number of communication channels increases, there are countless ways to reach your customers. However, more emphasis is being placed on online video communication to drive customer interaction, increase sales and maximize efficiency.