"Your website can be your most powerful marketing tool, delivering a steady stream of new business leads and filling your sales pipeline," writes Bob DeStefano in a Pro article at MarketingProfs. To make the most of this potential, though, you need to know whether your site is a lead-generation machine ... more

Over one-third (36%) of smartphone owners say they want to receive mobile grocery coupons, but only 9% have received a location-based coupon, discount code, or text message on their phone in the previous six months, according to a survey from Compete. more

With most large corporate purchases, the only way to get new customers to sign on is to let them hear directly from current customers who can speak about their experience with your products. So why do salespeople often resist participating in your company's customer-reference program? For several reasons... more

Point of fact: One of the most alluring things about Facebook is its infinite capacity to find us a new distraction—be it Farmville, virtual gift-giving or browsing through an old flame's recent family photo shoot (major creepiness factor, BTW). Second point of fact: Some companies know this about Facebook, and are already ... more

"I had a customer who made my blood pressure spike as soon as I heard she was on the phone," writes Scott McKain in a Pro article at the MarketingProfs site. "We would jump through hoops to try to keep her happy, and she stressed all of us beyond description." There ... more

Getting speaking gigs can be a mysterious and frustrating process, particularly if you don't have much experience. You know the drill: Send pithy email offering yourself up (or copiously fill out online proposal form). Hit Send. Wait. Sound familiar? Here's how to get the green light. more

You already know that a dashboard is an essential tool for improving (and proving) marketing effectiveness. These five steps will help you and your marketing team get started on the road to creating a dashboard that works for you. more

When we create and evolve lead-generation programs, we tend to focus on strategies, tools and goals. It's just as important, however, to plan for the management of all the data we collect. In a pair of posts at the Database Diva blog, Lori Feldman outlines common lead-management mistakes made by marketing ... more

Chief marketing officers at US companies are planning significant hiring and budget increases over the next two years as they remain optimistic about prospects for their companies and the economy, according to a survey conducted by Duke University and the American Marketing Association. Overall, CMOs expect marketing budgets to increase, ... more

A recent Nielsen study found that global consumption of social media increased 82 percent from Dec. 2008 to Dec. 2009 in the 10 countries surveyed, with users spending an average of 5.5 hours on their sites of choice per month! US and Australian addicts are among the heaviest users of all, spending 6 ... more

As B2B marketers continue to pinch pennies, a post last summer by Adam Blitzer at the B2B Marketing ROI blog deserves a second look. The question Blitzer addresses is this: For B2B prospecting, are free trials better than paid pilot programs? While Blitzer acknowledges that offering free trials to prospects may ... more

Cross-channel attribution is about assigning credit for marketing results to where credit is due. Most marketers and agencies either attribute all credit to the last touch point or have no way of attributing the credit in a meaningful manner. Here are the five common mistakes they make—and can avoid, by ... more

Which converts better and drives more sales: long-form copy or short-form copy? "The more you tell, the more you sell," claim the adherents of long copy. "No one has time to read below the fold," counter short-copy partisans. Of course, both sides are right... more

Dudes: Are you ready to give off some fresh new surfer vibes? Search engines are constantly looking for new signals they can use to improve the quality of the results they provide to Internet surfers, says Eric Enge in a recent post at Search Engine Watch. "Search engines continue to ... more

Let's face it: If your marketing approach consists of sporadically touting your company's greatness via the overpopulated social mediaverse, you're about to get absolutely nowhere—except ignored. Or hated. Blacklisted, even.  Frustrated with today's confusing social-media etiquette? Well, don't be! There are sassy methods for making your outreach simply ooze old-fashioned Southern ... more

Combining your product with top brands is an incredible way to escalate growth. If you are looking to drive revenue, enter new markets, or reposition your product, brand licensing can lead to dramatic results. As with any new endeavor, however, pitfalls abound. more

In a recent Search Engine Land article, Andrew Goodman predicts that the biggest risk in 2010-2011 for search marketers may lie in working with outdated assumptions about the size and potential of target markets and the paid-search channel. As a remedy, he suggests five investment or expansion "risks" that could ... more

We like to emphasize that mobile is probably the most personalized technology available so far in the 21st century. And these days, finding ways to incorporate yourself into users' daily rituals is crucial to maximizing brand exposure on their up-close-and-personal handhelds. That's one reason for taking a look at GM's new ... more

"Since white papers are among the most popular pieces of content for [many] buyers," notes Cheryl Goldberg at the High Tech Communicator blog, "you'll want to create a lot of them. But coming up with new ideas for white papers can be a daunting task." To ease your brainstorming efforts, ... more

Looking to make your brand trendier? Get a load of Trendistic, a clear and simple way to watch the ebb and flow of buzz on Twitter. A visit to the Trendistic homepage gives you a quick glimpse at what keyword is hottest on Twitter right now. In addition to the most current ... more

In a post at the Build a Sales Machine blog, Aaron Ross predicts that B2B boards and VPs of sales will repeat a "fatal mistake" in 2010. They'll assume this "old bedrock sales principle" still holds true: "If I need to double revenue growth, I need to double my sales ... more

In May 2009, Omniture and The CMO Club asked 102 CMOs to rate the relative effectiveness of digital-marketing media. The vast majority (78 percent) gave top marks to email marketing, but a sizable minority (33 percent) reported success in emerging social-media channels, too. That's because, these days, consumers "engage with a ... more

Are you facing increasing pressure from your leadership team to justify your marketing decisions? Most marketers can no longer afford to make decisions based on intuition or gut feel. Today, making good decisions requires data. Data and technology enable marketers to act and react. more

Cross-promotional efforts can help companies spread the word as new online-marketing platforms are launched, boosting follower interest and opt-in. The following are 10 popular strategies that companies use to maximize their digital-marketing mix. more

Some marketing activities or processes (in reality, many business activities) require "artists" to produce the desired output. However, that by itself does not make the output art. The distinction is important. more