Santa is all about customer relationships. Borrow a page from Santa's playbook to boost credibility, strengthen customer bonds, and -- ultimately -- grow your brand. more

The Internet has emerged as an effective tool for marketing professionals to gather news, market intelligence and buzz about companies, products and business issues. more

To take full advantage of the strength of online advertising, marketers must be proficient with the analytics of the medium and the concept of campaign optimization. more

"Know Your Users" is the mantra of any good designer. But what should you actually know about your users? more

An article a few weeks ago claimed that money spent by B2B marketers on branding is wasted because business customers know a great deal about supplier products and companies. Au contraire. more

Would you really dare to give each of your clients a gift of $500 each this Christmas? What about something worth $2000? Or maybe $5000? more

The act of positioning is a core element of a successful marketing strategy. This is a change — a healthy one — from the days when it was considered simply a tactic. Today, handled correctly by smart strategic marketers, it informs, identifies and lays the foundation for the relationships with ... more

Have you ever seen little kids playing organized youth soccer? Without fail, they swarm like bees to wherever the ball is--sideline to sideline, end to end. Some companies market this way and others aren't sure of their position in the market, or are constantly changing it, or believe their position ... more

Want to bolster consumer confidence, increase purchases and foster loyalty? Retailers should provide consumers with the opportunity to practice frugality in a way that doesn’t seem frugal, while lifting the perception of their quality of life. There are some retailers out there providing consumers with a dignified shopping experience at ... more

The clock is ticking: Now IS NOT the time to start trying to do things like setting up an affiliate program or optimizing your search engine rankings. Instead, what many online businesses need right now are some quick and easy ways to get their sites ready for the holidays. more

Web tagline is a tiny but key piece of site usability. A good tag captures a visitor's attention and interest long enough for her to decide if she is in the right place. This makes it a first step in the sales process. An ineffective tag leaves your visitor guessing ... more

We thought it would be good to balance out some recent talk on the web about what is marketing. Here's our view. more

Sometimes, less is more. That's especially true in this business climate. If you want to grab a customer’s attention and lock in their loyalty, the key is to save them time, money and effort. And that won't necessarily happen with simply more advertising. more

Continual improvement of products and services is an effective approach to maintaining existing customers and winning new ones, especially if your goal is to create strong word-of-mouth. Strong word-of-mouth tends to create customer evangelists, those passionate advocates who tell others about your products and services. To truly understand what your ... more

The economic downturn of the past two years has put marketers on the defensive. As budgets have been reduced and reduced again, marketers have stepped up efforts to find the Holy Grail of marketing--the formula, the software, even the general rule of thumb that enables marketers to measure the effectiveness ... more

Once you have a product or service, you have to set a price for it. This may be the most misunderstood exercise in all of marketing. Lucky for you, Dana is prepared to clue you in. Ready? more

If you’re at a loss for how to plan your marketing programs in the current economy, take a clue from nature. In natural systems, chaos and destruction are always followed by rebirth. If you’ve been burned by the recession, now is the time to start planting seeds. Here's five initiatives ... more

Are you a B2B company, putting (or considering putting) significant effort and significant resources into developing a coherent brand for your product? Researching the marketplace and analyzing competing brands? Establishing strategy sessions to review and select the best brand identity? If you are, you're probably wasting a lot of time ... more

Do you have a lot of customers, but you haven't done a good job of assembling an email list? Here's five techniques for growing your email list as a marketing tool. more

How do you clue your users in to your site's particular benefits? If you offer something that is unique to your organization (and chances are that you do--that's why you're in business), then how do you make the users aware of these benefits? As with life, the secret is in ... more

The days of having an intranet just because, well, it's a good idea are over. As a manager, you need to deliver hard data that justifies investment in your intranet. You need to show that a dollar spent on your intranet will deliver more value that a dollar spent elsewhere. ... more

This economic "rinse cycle" offers an opportunity to shore up your organization's fundamental strengths. Happily, for anyone responsible for a budget, pursuing the fundamentals doesn’t require cash as much as it requires wit and persistence. In part one of this two-part series, Christopher Kenton underscores five low- or no-cost initiatives ... more

Scan the search results page of any portal, and it’s easy to see why Internet search is such a tricky maze for some direct marketers to follow. With “Sponsored Links,” “Direct Web Matches” and “Featured Sites” beckoning consumers, knowing which of these hot strategies is most effective at capturing attention ... more

Look critically at IT's current operating cycles and its approach to business. Paul has, and he's identified five specific reasons why high tech firms will continue to be stuck in a downward spiral. To survive, high tech has to adapt to the current business climate. more

Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover. But you sure can tell a great deal about prospective vendors by the quality of their PowerPoint presentations. Here's what to look for, and what it will tell you. more