Contributed by Allen Weiss

  • Strategic Alliances: Benefits and Risks

    To minimize risk and maximize the benefits of strategic alliances, B2B companies must carefully consider their specific circumstances, objectives, and ...

  • Customers as 'Assets': Speaking the C-Suite's Language

    Speaking the language of the C-suite not only enhances marketers' credibility but also increases chances for getting meaningful resources for ...

  • How to Be More Customer-Focused

    In theory, it's easy to be customer-focused: gather and process customer information, segment, focus on target segments, understand customer perceptions, ...

  • Product Line Strategy: Five Approaches

    If you're responsible for a company's marketing strategy, one of the main issues you'll face is how to manage multiple ...

  • The Marketing Strategy of Launching a Brand-New Product

    To help us think strategically about the benefits and risks of launching a brand-new product to the market, it's useful ...

  • Strategic Advantage Through Competitive Intelligence and Analysis

    The mere effort of doing dynamic competitive analysis will reveal a host of insights you can use thereafter in your ...

  • For Long-Term Market Advantage, Analyze Yourself

    Marketing strategy is often thought about in terms of where the market is going and how best to satisfy the ...

  • Industry Foresight: Forecasting the Future of Your Market

    A vital component of any marketing strategy is thinking about what the future might look like. In strategy parlance, that's ...

  • Market Segmentation: Where Companies Go Wrong and Why You Need Differential Advantage Analysis

    Welcome to a highly misunderstood topic: segmentation. This article explains what marketers tend to get wrong about segmentation, what's a ...

  • Customer Benefits: A Brief Introduction to Why Customers Buy Your Products

    When as a marketer you identify and focus on benefits, you ensure that you are focusing your attention on what ...

  • Perceptual Maps and Competition: How to Understand and Improve Your Position in the Market

    Perceptual maps are the only way to understand what your position is in the market and how the market views ...

  • Gain Differential Advantage Over Your Competitors: Core Competencies

    A central goal of marketing strategy is to get an advantage over the competition. But how do you do that?

  • What Is Marketing Strategy? A Brief Introduction

    "What is the definition of marketing strategy?" is a common question among marketing professionals and others in the business world. ...

  • Positioning as the Foundation for Great Messages

    The goal of positioning, which is a strategic process, is to create benefit associations in the minds of your prospective ...

  • Why Some New Products Get Adopted Quickly: A Lesson From Infomercials

    If you've ever wondered what gets a new product adopted quickly, look no further than late-night infomercials. Their use of ...

  • Yes, Customers Always Know What They Want

    Supposedly, customers don't know what product they want until someone creates it. But that's not true: Customers do know what ...

  • Proving Marketing to Execs (Part 2): Marketing's Language Problem

    Every business function has its specialized vocabulary, but marketing terms are often vague or undefined—or their meaning is not agreed ...

  • Proving Marketing to Execs (Part 1)

    If you want to prove Marketing's worth to your executives, you have to think in their terms—that is, sales, profit, ...

  • How to Create Successful B2B Relationships

    B2B marketers have many partnerships—with intermediaries, customers, and others. Some are close relationships, and some aren't. How can you tell ...

  • What Is a Market, Really?

    Part of the problem that marketers face in positioning their product or service and confirming product/market fit is the term ...

  • Why You're Always Wrong and Your Customers Are Always Right

    If you're like most people, you live in a world where blame often happens in a systematic and predictable way. ...

  • 5 Reasons Why Online Sales Aren't a Bigger Share Of The Holiday Pie

    Http://www.mpdailyfix.com/images/holidaypiesales.jpg

  • The End of Internet Advertising?

    I typically visit a number of technology sites to learn about new technology, Internet companies and products - not to ...

  • What the Young People Say About Social Media

    Once upon a time I wrote a weekly column for an online technology magazine. When new Internet technologies and web ...

  • What I Learned at XDrive

    One of the benefits of being a tenured academic is the sabbatical. This is time when you get to do ...

  • Is Twitter Really Social?

    About one month ago decided to put some effort into becoming a Twitter devote and, sometimes even a fanatic. Given ...

  • Saving Social Media with a Business Model?

    There is a great deal of talk these days about social media companies and their need to find a business ...

  • MarketingProfs 'Classic Truths': How Do I Love Thee? Building a B2B Relationship to Last a Lifetime

    With the emphasis recently on customer relationship management (CRM), it seems there's a customer love-fest in the making. It's an ...

  • (Un)Proven Strategies

    I just received an email touting a download of some research that purported to give me proven strategies for success. ...

  • Is Price *Really* the Most Important Factor in Consumer Loyalty?

    "Research finds price is the most important factor in consumer This is the headline from a just-released report by DoubleClick ...

  • How to Get Rid of Certain Marketers

    As someone who has dedicated themselves to marketing for the past 20 years, you might find it surprising to hear ...

  • The Wisdom of Wikipedia?

    It seems to be that searching the web is getting stranger and stranger. Oh, not because of the various sites ...

  • Intimate Intruders

    Cell phone service providers are desperate to find new revenue streams, so it's not surprising that is making the step ...

  • Can Marketing Tactics Be Proven?

    The other day I was reading a press release. The company said it wrote articles on "proven tactics" that marketers ...

  • Technorati Turns 3: Can We Get Some Service?

    Congratulations to Technorati for turning 3 and changing the look and feel of its Web site, which you can read ...

  • Thought Leaders & Gurus: Too Big for Their Niches

    I just don't understand why people love the words "guru" and Whenever I see these words used by the business ...

  • Back at It: The E-book Believers

    E-book evangelists are still at it. They still think that e-books will make regular old paper books This, according to ...

  • Meaningless Words Lead to Stupid Marketing Surveys

    I participated in a survey today for a big magazine that deals with the computer industry. The survey used words ...

  • Fads and New Rules: Enough Already!

    Before you go out and buy a book about the next marketing fad, you ought to read a down to ...

  • Another Test Poll

    Here is a second test of the poll concept. This also can be very short or somewhat longer. It will ...

  • Do You Suffer From Technology Migration Migraines?

    Technology migration refers to the movement of customers from one (old) technological generation to another (new). But convincing customers to ...

  • What is Marketing?

    We thought it would be good to balance out some recent talk on the web about what is marketing. ...

  • Wireless Free-Riding

    The wireless web is taking off and Skygo.com reports that web ads may work. Well, watch out for free-riding! ...

  • The Case for Banner Ads

    Internet advertising and banner ads are in the news these days. Here's an article we ran last year that gives ...

  • Learning from Napster

    We first published this back in March of 2000. As we wait for a definitive ruling on Napster by the ...

  • Holiday E-Marketing Insights

    The holidays are over, but what have we learned about e-marketing? It turns out that people's basic social needs ...

  • Miscomprehension in Communication

    Firms often confuse consumers with their marketing communications. Here are some examples.

  • The New E-Marketing Rules

    This is an updated version of our debunking article. The point: There are no new e-marketing rules...just people who think ...

  • Will Pricing Innovations on the Web Survive?

    Iderive.com has a new pricing model for the web. Will it survive? In fact, will any of the ...

  • What's So Different About the Internet?

    Marketing on the internet is no different than traditional marketing, at least that's our view.

  • Demand Side Capitalism in the New Market

    Another fallacy of Internet startups is thinking they can create needs. We argue that not even the PC industry created ...

  • Revelations on the New World?

    Research studies come out all the time about consumer behavior on the net. Most report the obvious. Internet companies don't ...

  • Most New Products Fail

    The truth is Most New Products Fail. Here are the major reasons why. Use these to avoid your ...

  • New Research on Internet Consumers

    Learn how to think more critically about research in internet consumers by examining the latest research.

  • A Letter About Loyalty

    We get letters from thoughtful visitors. Here is one on the subject of consumer loyalty. Everyone talks about loyalty, but ...

  • The Internet Causes Social Demise?

    The results of a recent study, flashing across the Internet and reported by the news media, says the more we ...

  • Wireless Advertising to the Rescue?

    Shares of Yahoo fell last week over concerns about online advertising. Will wireless achieve the elusive relationship between advertising and ...

  • 20th Century Products

    Here are some of the most useful products from the 20th century.

  • Trailblazers on the Internet

    Venture capitalists have been talking a lot about the "myth" of the first mover advantage. But they are responsible ...

  • How to Determine the Size of Your Market - Part I

    Perhaps the most important question when thinking about starting a company or marketing a product is the size of the ...

  • Has Amazon Gone Too Far?

    Amazon is going into the furniture business. Are they stretching their brand name too far?

  • Of Hype and Honesty on the Web

    With Stephen King’s entrance into direct marketing and publishing of his new novel "The Plant" last week, we are witnessing ...

  • New Marketing Models: Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice

    Visionaries and gurus told us the Internet would change marketing as we know it. Regis McKenna is now forecasting ...

  • Part 2: Segmentation

    Before getting into how one can think about the various ways to practically segment a market, let's first consider some ...

  • The Problem with E-Books

    Barnes & Noble and others are making a serious attempt at the market for e-books. But they're missing a key ...

  • Priceline.com - Gambling for Groceries?

    With the stock of online grocers plummeting, some analysts think the priceline.com auction model will win for groceries. I don't ...

  • Dot-Coms and the Super Bowl

    The Super Bowl in 2000 was the beginning of a flood of dot.com ads. Everyone was looking for a ...

  • Is Michael Dell a Visionary?

    Everyone says Michael Dell is a Visionary. But what is a visionary? In this SoapBox, we argue that Dell ...

  • How to Target Your Public Relations Toward the Press

    To do good PR you need to understand what journalists are looking for. This tutorial is based on our insights ...

  • Useless Research

    Research that costs money but is useless.

  • Political Positioning

    Positioning is the key to marketing. But an inflexible position can ultimately hurt you. See how this works ...

  • That's (not) Entertainment

    Sites like pop.com and others are showing Hollywood's moves onto the Internet. But the Internet has a long way ...

  • Conjoint Analysis - Example

  • A Letter about the Fallacies and Failures of Start-Ups

    We get letters from thoughtful readers. Here is one that continues our previous article on the problems with start-up companies

  • Part 3: Segmentation

    So what are the bases for segmentation? While it is difficult to determine what will segment a market into ...

  • What Do Customers Really Buy?

    But what are they, and can you tell when you have identified a customer benefit?

  • Wireless Web Browser Woes

    Sprint's service is lousy, and they make it hard to upgrade to the wireless web. But will the rest ...

  • Has Michael Porter Turned Into a Marketing Person?

    He couches it in new jargon, but underneath its the same old marketing ideas of years ago.

  • Channel Conflict: Is Sony Going Too Far?

    Channel conflict is one of those internet buzzwords that unlike other cute transplants from the offline world has real and ...

  • Customer Loyalty is Underwater

    E-tailers don't seem to be creating close relationships with customers, according to a new study by the Gartner Group. ...

  • Predicting Your Online Behavior

    Doubleclick and CMGI are battling it out for determining your likely purchases, using different methodologies. Will either one really ...

  • Is Marketing About Fulfilling Needs?

    This is the biggest debate in marketing - is it about creating or fulfilling needs? This view argues that whether ...