Last month, we offered a bunch of options for optimizing your local search advertising. Well, here's a way to extend your local search marketing options even further: through your good-old local news guys. In a recent article at Search Engine Land, KeyRelevance's Chris Silver Smith suggests three ways to optimize ... more

Based on the premise that data's no fun (and no use!) without insight, BrandZ has launched BrandZ 100, an iPhone app that takes its annual Top 100 Brands Report and actually makes it fun to read. Developed by IconMobile, the app—decked out in crisp black, white and red—takes you straight to ... more

Mobile marketing is on track to grow 27% to a $2.1 billion market in 2010, according to the Mobile Marketing Association. The total mobile audience is still relatively small, however, and is confined to a limited market segment; moreover, marketers who reach out to the wrong mobile audience risk turning ... more

Marketing messages with personalized subject lines usually fail to impress DJ Waldow. "[Most] of those emails use my first name as the 'hook' to get me to open," he writes in a recent post at the Email Experience Council blog. "This never works for me. Never. I know it's fake. ... more

Speculate all you want about how successful an online marketing campaign has been. But once someone brings hard data to the table, all bets are off: The answers are plain to see. Surprisingly, however, the average company doesn't make marketing decisions based on data. Why? Some companies explain that they ... more

For the first time, the number of small and medium-sized businesses using digital/online media has surpassed the number using traditional media, according to the Kelsey Group. more

"It's certainly not unusual that a stand up comedian like Tim Washer would be producing absurdist viral videos," notes AdAge. "What is surprising is that the IBM communications executive is doing so for his straight-laced corporate employer." Washer's first mini-mockumentary for the conservative company was called Mainframe: The Art of the ... more

Smartphone units sold worldwide in 2009 will grow 14.5% from 2008 levels, according to a forecast by Infonetics. more

Inactive subscribers are a conundrum for email marketers. Although they treat your messages with apparent indifference, they never opt out; as a result, you continue to send messages that they continue to ignore. You naturally want to reactivate these recipients so you can revive relationships and make future sales.  Now here's ... more

Hoping to position Lufthansa as bigger than just a German airline, digital agency Profero has helped it create MySkyStatus—a tool that has brought Lufthansa's branding catch-phrase, "passion for precision," to life in a hands-on way. "Communications needs to have a use," explains Profero's Wayne Arnold in a recent article at Adweek. "Saying ... more

"Too often, we are looking for silver-bullet systems or recipes for success, while ignoring the basics," says Bill Rice in a post at the Better Closer blog. "In my experience, 90 percent of big sales improvement comes from getting back to the basics." What are the tried-and-true basics of B2B marketing—those ... more

Consumers flock daily to social media sites to keep in touch with friends and family, but they are also keen to buy from brands that they have seen on these sites, according to new research from Performics and ROI Research. more

Companies in the high-end service industry often do much more than turn a blind eye to the extramarital escapades of their guests. "[T]he owners and managers of the world's most exclusive restaurants and hotels pull out all the stops to make sure their best customers can conduct their affairs there ... more

Warren Katz uses a post at the Elephant Bites blog to discuss the recession-driven microtrend of "glamping"—a freshly coined portmanteau for glamorous camping. In essence, its proponents want the low-budget benefit of a holiday in the great outdoors, but don't care to leave all the luxuries of home behind. "So, who ... more

Google and other sites may soon be prevented from searching and indexing News Corp. content, Rupert Murdoch recently said. Whether content can live (profitably) off the Google grid remains to be seen. more

In a recent post at the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba offers a few quick stats about airline revenues in September '09. First, a couple of positives: Southwest reported an 8.8% increase in revenue passenger miles and JetBlue recorded 9.8% jump in passenger miles. Then come the negatives:  ... more

Last summer, Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget quizzed 2,400 people on their attitudes toward marketing and made an interesting discovery. "70% of consumers who visit Facebook at least once a month and are a 'fan' of at least one company or brand, don't believe they have given those companies permission to ... more

As a result of the financial crisis, Americans have permanently changed their attitudes toward saving money and are more focused on paying down debt and controlling finances, according to a recent study by Synovate. more

Not all Spanish speakers want the same thing from a website—many more factors than just language are at play.That's why, Tamara Barber explains in a post at the Forrester blog, research on customers' preferences led Best Buy and Allstate to dramatically different conclusions: "Best Buy," she notes, "has learned ... more

Most consumers who use Facebook and are a "fan" of a company or brand don't believe they have given those companies permission to market to them; many don't believe marketers are welcome in social networks at all. But here's how companies can connect with fans without turning them off. more

In aggregating and organizing content from top sites around the Internet, Alltop goes a long way toward solving the filtering problem that many of us have. Alltop can be an invaluable tool for marketers. This article shares eight ways that we can benefit from using Alltop. more

A big part of making market leadership pay off is an ability to convey and promote thought leadership. Thought leadership is the outward expression of market leadership. It conveys your views on where your market-space is heading (or should be heading), and by communicating in that way, you show confidence ... more

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the value of usability testing and talked about some testing tools. Here are more reviews of low-cost or no-cost usability tools. more

If you blog, you've certainly encountered your share of bizarre, offensive or spammy comments. It comes with the territory. Each of us has our own standard, and you've probably developed a list of commenting no-nos. But do your readers know what they happen to be? "I publish every reasonable (and some ... more

Touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the US grew 159% during the past year to 23.8 million users in August 2009, according to a study by comScore. more