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My partner is fond of saying that the best judge of your marketing is your accountant. This is relatively easy to do online, to measure your marketing results all the way to revenue. Plus the learnings can be tried in other parts of the marketing portfolio.

Marketing is always trying to get a seat at the executive table. This report shows why CMOs continue to struggle.

There is more and more a tension between IT and Marketing. New tools put IT prowess in marketers' hands. The quotes from the CIO-CMO Forum show us an emerging strength in marketing. But IT is our friend in the process. They just need to realize that they can materially impact revenue in the enterprise. Marketing is a way IT can assert itself as a profit center, not just a utility. Great quotes.

As I'm putting the final touches on my up-coming book, it is very clear that content is the most important conversion strategy: It influences and enables almost every other strategy.

If you need to get started on content marketing here is a pretty complete list of resources to get you started.

It is a great sign that @SEOMoz included Conversion in their grand plan for Content Marketing. This infograph considers conversion a key component of content marketing, but in my upcoming book on conversion I make content a key part of conversion marketing. Different approaches, same result.

Enjoy the Infograph.

 @TheGrok (Bryan Eisenberg) is one of the founders of the performance marketing movement -- we've called it conversion marketing. He has the cred to ask the hard questions. In this very impactful article, he asks "Really, is this so hard to do?" of the email marketers whom he sees as "broken."

These examples should leave you with a feeling of, "Oh yes. I get it now."

That can be a very valuable feeling.

Marketers have it tough. Just look at all of the things we can optimize! Where do we start?!

Well, we can start with these 25 articles, including one from yours truly. Search Optimization Social Optimization Local Optimization Email Marketing (No Optimization?) Mobile Optimization Content Marketing Conversion Optimization Reputation Management

This article lists to the problems will be solving in 2017: marketers are stuck in data collection mode, and not data use mode; and that marketing software is too damn hard to use. We want to show marketers how to use data to make great decisions. And until the tools get easier-to-use, we provide the teams that know how to turn the knobs pull the levers and make these tools work well.

Key to the many strategies included in The Customer Creation Equation (due out this Spring) is the use of content to charge and discharge marketing "batteries." These strategies involve writing what author Kathryn Aragon calls "Bait Pieces." While I don't see my customers as dumb fish, her process is right on.

Remember: to market on the Web you have to create a Markishing Department, part marketing, part publishing.

The blog volcano wants to ERUPT. But it won't unless you are doing some basic things in your posts and articles. Here are eight important and relatively easy to follow tips to give your posts and articles legs.

In my upcoming book, I make the case that email is preferable to social media for storing market attention. You might think that, in the era of mobile devices, my preference for email may seem quaint.

Think again.

Clearly, mobile devices and email go together like milk and Cap'n Crunch cereal. Only healthier. Enjoy these stats and keep that email coming!

Content is the best way to improve your conversion rate overall. This is a great primer for those marketing departments that are committing to this powerful strategy.

It is always tough to market to a specific target. Here Fiber One is clearly targeting boomers, and a particular brand of boomer. No doubt this will hurt their sales to conservative families. There will be some backlash. But, we all must be creating content for more and more specific markets, and walking away from the others if we're going to grow our businesses. Hat tip to Fiber One: may your bravery be rewarded with sales and market share.

Does your company have a Markishing department yet? That's a Marketing/Publishing department, and if you don't you better start working on it.

This infograph from Eloqua illustrates the power of content at various stages of the purchasing cycle. You don't have to be an enterprise to be using this kind of markishing approach to marketing. Learn about content development and cascades in my up-coming book.

This article on ebooks comes at an important time at Conversion Sciences as we put the final touches on a unique ebook of our own (preorder Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects).

Content is the way you charge and release the power stored in your marketing batteries (customer lists, email lists, social media networks).

And don't forget that ebooks now outsell print books.

Scott Brinker builds the bridge between landing page optimization and content marketing.

Interesting, well produced videos on marketing techniques.

Slideshare is great for delivering pithy advice that slowly coalesces into understanding. That's why I love slide decks like this one.

You may not be able to implement these tips tomorrow, but you will begin to think about at online marketing differently.

And that can make all the difference.

Take a look at content marketing through the eyes of several experts, including me.

Now, you can get your marketing advice from the same part of the country that your favorite team plays. If you're a fan of the Dallas Mavericks or the Chicago Bears or Oklahoma University, you'll want to get your learning from one of these ten blogs from the middle of the country.

These are the top 10, and we are proud to come in at number 7.

This is a great example of creating a MVNP (Maximum Viable Non-Product) to test your market and marketing.

If there was one thing that defeats your efforts to market with data, it would be lack of resources. Marketing departments are notoriously under-staffed for the workload delegated by executives. It can become overwhelming to imagine doing tests when you're just trying to get communications out the door.

In the interest of helping you find more time and happiness in your work, I offer this excellent list of 26 "time hacks."

Please. Do some split testing with the extra time you find. Your visitors will thank you.

26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20 from Etienne Garbugli @egarbugli