We design our marketing campaigns for "rational" buyers. But do buyers ever act rationally? In a preview of his keynote at the MarketingProfs event next month, NY Times bestselling author and MIT Prof Dan Ariely talks about the irrational factors that influence buying decisions. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

An engagement between a buyer and a seller begins with a single point of contact. It could be as a sale or an inquiry that, with the appropriate follow-up, can be converted into an ongoing experience for both the seller and the buyer. It is such an experience or set of experiences that create what we define as an engagement—or at least the potential of creating one. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

How can you build and steward a long-term customer relationship if you can't access your prospect in the first place? To reach those big fish takes creativity, perseverance, ingenuity, chutzpah, and, sometimes, just plain dumb luck. Here are five creative ideas that will get you in the front door. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Today's technology offers ample opportunities to start conversations with and among customers, fans, foes, competitors, and the press—any person or group who cares to listen and, perhaps, act on the messages received. By some estimates, 85% of the information companies collect is not in a form that they can access or analyze—it is unstructured. The Gartner Group reports unstructured data doubles every three months while seven million web pages are published every day. This cacophony presents the one of the biggest challenges companies face today. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Over the past 15 years, business-to-business marketers have focused on the pipeline—leads converting to opportunities converting to wins. The reason was simple... [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

For email marketers, dealing with the small business owner can be an ongoing challenge. There are typically three main obstacles to introducing email marketing to a small businesses. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Marketers are better served by liquid fluidity in their thought processes and approaches. That way they can adapt to sudden changes and new, hot technologies as social media continues its march forward. As this natural process continues to unfold over time and communities evolve, their information needs and consumption of media will evolve, too. With increasingly diverse and changing marketing environments, successful marketers will focus on social media principles rather than tactics. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

There is a new wave of branding that aims to occupy every minute of the customer's day with an unbroken theme of branded experience rather than the momentary brand rush of purchase. Experiential brand building is taking on new and all-encompassing dimensions. IKEA, for example, is no longer just a flat-pack-furniture and homewares store. It's a construction company that builds IKEA houses, based on the IKEA promise of easy living and affordable design. Welcome to the world of living branding—a new breed of 24/7 brands that are likely to occupy more and more of our lives, from our waking moments to when we retire to bed. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

There is an entire industry devoted to helping companies determine customer satisfaction levels through surveys and analysis. But how much real value does knowledge of "satisfaction" contribute to helping you keep profitable customers? The answer, unfortunately, is "not much." Though surveys do serve a purpose (primarily showing trending: "Are we doing better or worse than last year?"), they don't tell the whole story. The following are three fundamental reasons why it's dangerous to rely on customer satisfaction surveys to help improve your customer experience. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Increasingly, companies are beginning to reach out to their customers to help them with their marketing efforts; in some cases, companies are actually turning some marketing functions over to their customers entirely. Here is how companies have successfully turned at least one of the 4 Ps of Marketing over to their customers. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Whether or not you completely understand social media or social networking sites, the one aspect you must understand is that they are going to change the way businesses advertise. Facebook, in particular, is constantly evolving and improving its users' experience with new features and applications. As a result, Facebook is trying to change the way businesses market and advertise their products and services to potential consumers. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

What do you get when you combine video, social networking, micromedia, and a very savvy French entrepreneur? You get Seesmic. Seesmic is a social network where the primary content is video. Users record video, post it to the site, and other users reply in video. It's new and it's red-hot. It's also a glimpse of the future. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

A strong commitment to environmental sustainability in product design and manufacturing can yield significant opportunities to grow your business, to innovate, and to build brand equity. In fact, if you don't manage your business with respect to environmental and social sustainability, your business may not be sustained! [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Lots of companies create interesting and attention-getting ads with the brand name or major takeaway buried somewhere therein. So what happens? Consumers remember the great ad. But for the life of them, they have no idea what it was for... or who it was by. Don't less this happen to you! [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Anyone who has taken Marketing 101 knows the 4 Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. But what you may not know is that some companies - including these four - are turning these Ps over completely to customers. (Graphic: David Armano.) [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

This past weekend, Nike hosted its 4th annual Women's Marathon in San Francisco... and, friends, this is no ordinary marathon. Yes, it's still 26.2 miles of courage and pain, but this course is also full of female-friendly delights and surprises. Specifically designed with women in mind, the Nike Women's Marathon motivates women to bring their body, mind, spirit, and camaraderie to run their best race. Let's take a look at the core marketing-to-women strategies that Nike is using to elevate the impact of this event. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

When your boss or client has the final say, and the decision doesn't make good marketing sense, what do you do? Many senior managers have little marketing knowledge, yet the buck stops with them. Here's an approach to help you "convince" them that you have a solid point. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

The better you are at involving your customers in the philosophy of your brand, the better they'll understand why you're special. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Advertising is dead. Consumers have been over-advertised to and over-sold. So what's a marketer to do? [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

The fifth-largest advertising organization in the world is Tokyo's Dentsu. Its gross profit of more than $2 billion is largely generated in Japan. Although Dentsu politely declines to name its clients, a little research reveals that its biggest accounts include Shiseido cosmetics and Toyota. Here's a look inside the organization. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Attracting—and ultimately closing—deals with new clients can take professional service providers anywhere between several months and several years. Since most firms rely on their partners and principals to bring in new work, client acquisition ends up consuming a lot of the organization's most valuable resources. One sure way to increase profitability, then, is to find ways to reduce the time that these highly paid professionals spend developing new business—so that they can devote more time to generating revenue. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

These 18 concepts will give you an edge on your competition—or an edge, period. So if the same old left-brain thinking that everybody else is using just doesn't get you where you want to be, try these creative concepts on for size. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

There's new interest in solving an age-old corporate problem of how to measure customer satisfaction. Lukcily, there are new tools for doing so, too. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

Leading consumer-products companies are looking to rebrand, repackage and relaunch... often too frequently. Sometimes, the effort is merely putting a bandage on a deeper sore. It's far less painful to assess lagging sales in a superficial manner than it is to dig deeper into company practices, customer-service issues, and the actual product mix being offered—not to mention how customers are experiencing the brand and whether that brand is delivering on its promises. In fact, companies that really want to dig for the truth ought to seek answers to these questions... . [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

What's the most common mistake companies make in crafting collateral? What are the keys to creating content that reflects a company's credibility? And how does a company stop talking about itself... and focus on its customers? Here, the author of "Writing Copy for Dummies" shares his insider secrets and expertise. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Customer Behavior

For personalized gifts retailer Personal Solutions, matching up complementary items for a monthly catalog was one thing. Manually serving up suitable recommendations and keeping up with seasonal inventories for real time online sales without an automated process was another.[Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Customer Behavior

In late 2006, Dollar's business was slowing at New York's LaGuardia airport. With some outside help, the local marketing manager developed an email survey, then used the answers to pinpoint Dollar's weaknesses. The resulting efficiencies helped Dollar grow its parking-related business by 24%.[Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Customer Behavior

Goodwill Industries receives generous donations of clothing, many in good shape and by popular brands, but is perceived as a purveyor of low-quality, outdated merchandise. With a social-media marketing campaign, the nonprofit was able to change that perception and connect with young professional women who buy vintage clothing.[Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Customer Behavior

Office supply chain OfficeMax also sells digital cameras and other products popular as holiday gifts—but its customers didn't think of it as a holiday-shopping destination. What's more, it was often confused with its chief rival. A wildly popularly web-based viral marketing campaign helped OfficeMax distinguish itself and encourage shoppers. [Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Customer Behavior

The e-newsletter has become ubiquitous. Almost a dime a dozen. How do you make yours not only stand out in the inbox, but make a positive impact on your bottom line? This guide will show you how. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Customer Behavior

Set clear objectives and a realistic scope to online research projects. These are just two of the steps that this comprehensive, step-by-step planning guide will help you to accomplish to insure your online research results in the most relevant and useful information possible. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Customer Behavior

Great product, great sales team, great marketing collateral - now what? People to sell to, of course. Put your lead generation tactics under the microscope with this enlightening how-to guide. Get more and better qualified leads, faster today. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Customer Behavior

Direct marketing is one of the fastest changing disciplines within marketing today. What worked 10 years ago, isn't working today. Heck, what worked last week sometimes doesn't even work today, so keep your skills sharp with his How-To guide, focusing on the B2B market. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Customer Behavior

Link directly to the raw (aggregate) data in this 2006 survey of the ways companies are incorporating the voice of the customer into their marketing, their product development, and their management. With access to the raw data, you can view the results, and even filter them to see how a subset of companies in your country or industry answered. In this way, you can interpret the data in the most meaningful way for your business. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Customer Behavior

"This is a truth of the Internet," writes Seth Godin in a post at his eponymous blog. "When traffic comes to your site without focused intent, it bounces. [Seventy-five percent] of all unfocused visitors leave within three seconds. Any site, anywhere, anytime." Godin calls it "silly... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Customer Behavior

If you visit a new site called wowOwow.com —or, formally, The Women on the Web—you'll find a guided tour hosted by none other than venerable gossip columnist Liz Smith. She begins by explaining why a group of longtime friends—including Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin and... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Customer Behavior

Samples are often touted as effective tools that give customers a taste of what your product will be like, and increase the likelihood of their buying it in the future. But what makes the consumer's experience with samples a positive one? According to researchers, it's nothing more... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Customer Behavior

On a recent visit to J. Crew, Jackie Huba asked the salesperson if a dress made her hips look big. The frank response, "Yes, it does," was followed with a swift recommendation for a more flattering alternative. In a post at the Church of the... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Customer Behavior

When Disneyland first opened the It's a Small World ride in the mid-1960s, the catchy chorus of its theme song was largely metaphorical. No more. Advances in technology have made the world a much smaller place for everyone—and opened global opportunities for small businesses like... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Customer Behavior