Upcoming Conference: Business-to-Business Forum 2008 » Boston, June 9 & 10, 2008

Site Article Index



  • Man Bites Giraffe: Some Awesome (and Awful) Email Subject Lines
    If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: subject lines matter when it comes to email marketing. Think of subject lines like the headline of a newspaper article. If it grabs you, you start to read. Over the past few months, the author collected subject lines from all sorts of senders, all based on how they grabbed him the second he saw them. What you'll see here is quick analysis of what he liked or despised. The hope is that after perusing this piece, you get a sense of what other marketers are doing and how you can be better, resulting in more opens, more views, and more purchases.
  • Going Viral With Your B2B Marketing: Q&A With David Meerman Scott
    Viral marketing has been all the rage in recent years: Companies are intoxicated with the idea of creating the next video that spreads across the Internet and becomes a viral sensation. But for every successful viral effort there are countless attempts that totally miss the mark. Here's where David Meerman Scott comes in. Scott understands why ideas spread in a Web 2.0 world, and he educates his clients on why the "old school" rules of PR and marketing are totally irrelevant in a time of content-sharing on YouTube and Twitter.
  • How to Get the Web Content You Want From the Employees You Have
    With the growing significance of the Web as an integral part of the long B2B sales process, companies are more aware of the value of content: meaningful communications material that attracts and holds prospect attention. But... where will that content come from? It can (and should) come from you and your employees.
  • Online Customer Communities Power Routine Innovation
    As a result of its online customer community, a company can get much more than basic product feedback. It gains deep insight into the needs of customers, and creates ever-greater customer loyalty by embracing customers as co-designers. Most importantly, the company goes directly to the source for product enhancements, pulling new innovations and ideas directly from the minds of the customers who use, buy, and recommend its products. This is the holy grail of customer-centered product design. Online customer communities can enable the connections, host the conversations, and facilitate the processes that make routine innovation possible.
  • Getting in the Front Door of Prospects: Five Creative Marketing Ideas That Work
    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.
  • Time to Wake Up to Email HTML Standards
    HTML email marketing is now thriving and widely encouraged for its strong ROI and results. Pundits predict an ROI of $45.65 for every dollar spent on email marketing in 2008. Email was also voted best marketing vehicle for customer retention, according to Jupiter Research. HTML email has come a long way, but there is one major pain point that remains: compatibility across all major email accounts.
  • How to Hear the Voice of Your Customers: Hone First-Person Intelligence From All Forms of Feedback
    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.
  • Engagement—A New Information-Based Form of Advertising
    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.
  • Five Tactics for Busting Silos in Your Company
    As a marketing professional, you likely work in a specialized function that may feel like a silo in your company. But you're also best positioned to break down the walls between your function and others (like R&D, sales, finance, and so forth). It's not an easy task, but the following five tactics can help.
  • Eight Ways Your Company Can Benefit From Blogging
    Blogging takes advances in marketing one step further by allowing businesses to initiate conversations with their audience. Gaining a better understanding of your customers allows you to more effectively and efficiently market to them. This, of course, lowers your marketing costs.
  • How to Create Marketing Demos That Sell Products
    One of the biggest challenges that marketing departments face is producing marketing tools that actually get used by the sales team. You want to create marketing tools that help sell products, not collateral that sits on a shelf. So how do you do it? How do you create a marketing tool that not only gets used but also can reinforce your marketing messaging so that everyone is speaking the same language?
  • Getting Started With Segmentation: It's Not Just RFM
    You may or may not be using the basic segmentation strategy of RFM (recency, frequency, monetary): dividing your email mailing list into a few buckets based on recency in ordering or visitation to the site, the number of times they've ordered or visited the site, and the lifetime spend. But here's a better approach to segmentation.
  • Multivariate Testing, Part 1: An Introduction
    As web marketers seek new ways to boost conversion rates and improve the site experience of their visitors, interest in multivariate testing is on a feverish rise. But those unfamiliar with the techniques are often unclear about where to start, or how to ensure success.
  • Lead-Generation Blueprints in 30 Minutes: How a Company Quadrupled Marketing ROI
    Marketers must continually fight the temptation of executing random, disconnected lead-generation activities to prospects. Success today requires marketers to apply the discipline of campaign development in order to establish a relevant, timely dialog with the target audience.
  • Engagement—A New Information-Based Form of Advertising
    by Lester Wunderman
  • Redesigning Web Sites to Put Customers in Charge of Their Experience
    Online users expect more today from Web sites, and competition is fierce. Marketers should be considering how to change their sites to keep up with customer expectations of the Web, and to increase conversions and enhance the brand experience. In fact, all companies with public-facing Web sites may soon be challenged with a redesign. There is opportunity for marketers to take the lessons of customer-centricity and put them to work to optimize customer relationships online.
  • What Not to Do for Email Marketing Done Right
    Email marketers must keep in mind that a consumer who decides to opt in to the brand's email channel is likely a fan of that brand. Do not lose those consumers by making the following mistakes.
  • All Search Engines Love Spiders: How Meta Commands Can Help You Love Them Too
    Nearly all search engines use spiders (also known as robots, their original name) to go out and scour the Web looking for Web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine. Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have been used on individual Web pages to modify how search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. Here are some of the more popular ones and reasons you might want to use them (or not).
  • Corporate Blogging: Getting Past 'No' If You're Not the CEO
    When Bob Lutz of GM or Jonathan Schwartz of Sun set up their blogs, they probably didn't worry too much about the review with Legal. But how does, say, a midlevel corporate marketer or product manager set out to create an "official" blog with the sanction of Legal?
  • Top 10 Things You Should Be Monitoring in Your PPC Reports
    Web analytics tools and pay per click reporting features are becoming more sophisticated, offering savvy marketers vital insights into what's working, what's not, and what needs more effort. But there is so much data available that it can become difficult to determine what to look at and which to ignore. TMI (or Too Much Information) becomes both a blessing and a curse.
  • How to Strengthen a Site via Title Tag Strategies: Part 2, Some Advanced Tactics
    If you hadn't paid much attention to title tags until now, but you implemented the basic concepts covered in part one of this series, you are already well on your way to creating a better user experience as well as a more-optimized search experience. Of course, most of us aren't satisfied with just the basics.
  • Marketers, It's Time to Hop Off the 'Time Management' Treadmill
    Ever sigh to yourself, "There just aren't enough hours in the day!"? You're not alone. Most marketers are overloaded and under-resourced. But it doesn't have to be that way. And managing your time more efficiently isn't the answer. Nor is simply delegating. You also need to be discerning about what you take on. In fact, when was the last time you prioritized your "to-do" list based on what will help further your marketing career instead of merely what will get you through your week?
  • Five Steps to Prepare Marketing to Demonstrate Value in a Tough Economic Climate
    We may all be tightening our belts a bit more soon. As a result, our marketing budgets will be under even more scrutiny, and marketing professionals will be held even more accountable for the money they invest. The pressure for marketing to demonstrate the contribution and value it is making will increase... yes, even more.
  • The Top 5 Reasons Subscribers Opt Out of Email (and What to Do About It)
    There are plenty of reasons for email marketers to pay attention to their unsubscribes. But if we read a bit between the lines, we might find some value by learning both to reduce the number of unsubscribes from our campaigns and to better engage those who stay with us.
  • How to Make Email Marketing More Mobile-Friendly
    Mobile technology continues to develop. The number of consumers with mobile devices capable of retrieving and viewing email continues to increase rapidly. The early adopters of the Blackberry have given way, in numbers at least, to those using what are fast becoming fully functional internet-ready devices. With multiple mobile platforms on the market and mobile phone companies vying for the sale of not only the devices but also the data plans that supply the bandwidth, these "mini-messengers" are in the hands of millions of consumers. Could your email be more mobile friendly?
  • How to Strengthen a Site via Title Tag Strategies, Part 1: The Basics
    Why is it that one of the most important elements of a Web site—title tags—which also tend to be one of the easiest to manage, is so often done incorrectly? What makes that shortcoming even more amazing is that SEO practitioners constantly talk about title tags. In fact, if ever there could be an area of universal or near-universal agreement in the SEO community, it would be in regard to the importance of title tags.
  • Real-Time Messaging: Targeted Email Communications to Drive Web Site Traffic and Increase ROI
    Much is being said these days about how marketing effectiveness can be increased by targeting customers with the right message at the right time based on customer behaviors and buying patterns. However, many companies have not been able to evolve past text-based confirmation messages.
  • What You Don't Know Can Hurt Your Brand Equity
    Ultimately, brand protection is all about vigilance. By regularly monitoring the use of brands online, organizations can ensure prior infractions don't recur and can rapidly identify when new incidents arise. In a world where an organization's brand can represent half, or more, of the company's equity, it's an investment of time and resources that's well made.
  • Six Keys to Creating a Winning Marketing Strategy
    In a rush to get a new product to market, many companies don't invest the necessary time to get a solid strategy in place to ensure its success. Here are six keys to determine the right strategies to minimize the chance that you will spend hours—and a chunk of your marketing budget—implementing a flawed plan. Bonus: Get a Marketing Template.
  • Five Ways for Marketers to Effectively Reach CIOs
    Technology marketers have spent decades trying to connect with CIOs. And in an environment where technology is fueling innovation, yet investment capital remains tight, reaching CIOs has never been more important (or more difficult). Here are five proven approaches.
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Arguing SEO Tactics and Keeping Your Living Room Clean
    Today we discuss some SEO tactics that may or may not be Black Hat, and how to deliver a dope smack to commenters who don't add to the conversation. All that and more in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics and what's new on the technology front.
  • How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Company Blog
    One of the biggest hurdles that many companies face in adopting a blogging strategy is that they aren't sure how to quantify the results of their efforts. But as blogging has evolved, and it has become much easier to accurately measure blog performance and tie those measurements back to achieving specific goals.
  • Sculpting your Site's PageRank Can Help Your Search Engine Rankings
    Sculpting PageRank? Are you scratching your head, wondering whether Stephan is talking about carving a masterpiece? In a way, he is. If you are considering your options for getting a jump on your competitors in the search results, take a closer look at PageRank sculpting.
  • Increase Your Email Campaign's Power to Persuade: Move, Motivate, and Entice
    The ability to move, motivate, and entice consumers within the confines of their inbox is not an easy task. Too often, marketers overlook the tools available to attract and draw customers to open their messages. The inbox is a competitive arena in which you must fight for your open. The battle can be won by effectively utilizing and optimizing four straightforward email marketing elements.
  • Three Small Tips to Juice up Your Personal Branding
    What goes unnoticed by many can be an keen advantage for the few. By taking steps to not only build a personal brand but also seek new ways to circulate your name, you will be more successful. Here are three easy (and easily overlooked) things you can do to juice up your personal branding.
  • Marketing's New 5 Ps: Turning What You Know Inside out
    With apologies to Philip Kotler, whose four Ps—product, price, place, and promotion—have been integral to any successful product or service marketing effort of the past 50 years, today's successful marketing hinges on five new Ps. Whereas the Ps we studied in college are all from the provider's point of view, these new Ps focus with laser-like clarity on the customer.
  • Preparing for the Future: How the CIO and CMO Must Collaborate to Win
    In the past, the CMO and CIO have had a tenuous relationship, with both roles vociferously complaining about the other's lack of understanding, knowledge, and respect. But two powerful exponential trends are forcing Marketing and IT to communicate and collaborate like never before.
  • Step Into The Spotlight!—'Cause All Business Is Show Business!
    There's so much that business can learn from showbiz: Not to step onto the stage with a lousy script. How to give a blockbuster performance. How to get your face in the newspaper without robbing a bank. But, before you can even think about how to develop box-office appeal for your business, you gotta know what part you're playing.
  • So Many Choices, So Little Difference: A Five-Point Email Marketing Service Provider Checklist
    You can uncover a slew of companies that tout the virtues of this email service and that email service and that other service over there in the corner. How does a corporate marketer charged with the sole purpose of finding the right company to provide software and service to get an email marketing campaigns off the ground make the right choice?
  • Blurring the Lines Between Advertising and Entertainment
    Since many traditional advertising platforms are static in nature, and consumers are becoming increasingly interactive in their preferences, companies must become increasingly adept at using a mix of new interactive tools to reach their audiences. We are living in an interactive, entertainment-oriented society; let that fact guide you as you develop new marketing programs.
  • Building Bridges with Your Corporate Communications Officer
    A company's chief communications officer (CCO) and its chief marketing officer (CMO) play vital roles that are very different from each other but can intersect in powerful ways. By understanding what your firm's CCO does, you can gain insights into how to build a relationship that benefits not only the two of you but also your company overall.
  • Email Etiquette—Use It, or Lose Business
    What is so powerful that it could spoil your customer relationships, blemish your reputation, entangle you in a legal battle, or even put you out of work? Email is that powerful tool. To maintain control over it, you must know the rules of email etiquette.
  • 10 Steps to Building a Better Blogger-Relations Program
    The best communications strategies will envelop not only authorities in new and traditional media, but also those voices in the "Magic Middle," who help carry information and discussions among your customers directly. Here's the foundation that will help you and your company engage with bloggers more effectively and genuinely.
  • Seven Steps to a Successful Marketing Blog
    How do you start from scratch yet create a top-ranked marketing blog in less than a year? If the author had anything close to a foolproof formula, she'd be making an infomercial right now rather than writing this article. Nevertheless, here she shares some tips from her own experience to help you achieve success with your marketing blog.
  • The Six Cs of Permission Email Marketing, Part 3
    If you now understand (or can at least appreciate!) the first four Cs of Permission Email Marketing: Conscious Consent, Choice, Clarity and Confidence, you're ready for our final two: Control and Confirmation.
  • Six Tips for a First-Time or Newly Appointed CMO
    The most challenging part of a new Chief Marketing Officer's job is the first 4-6 months, when the marketing foundation is being poured. After that, it's all about delivering ongoing results and proving (and re-proving) the value that marketing provides. Here are six tips to give a new CMO some early success, strong momentum, and a solid leadership platform.
  • Present the Unexpected but Stay on Purpose: Lessons From The Apprentice
    If you saw the last episode of The Apprentice, you know that two teams of celebrity contestants were asked to create a campaign to help launch a new product, Dial Yogurt Body Wash. The task was to come up with a four-page advertorial for Redbook Magazine. Each team took a different approach, but they both missed something critical.
  • Web 2.0 Politics: What Brands Can Learn From the 2008 Presidential Campaigns
    If the Internet community didn't know its place in politics back in 2004, it certainly does today. Its "place" is to engage and educate us, promote candidates, help with fundraising and more... all through the use of new social-media tools that are increasingly vital to a candidate's overall marketing strategy.
  • The Six Cs of Permission Email Marketing, Part 2
    In this second of our three-part series on the six Cs of permission email marketing, we continue to define the permission fundamentals by examining the third and fourth dimensions of permission: Clarity and Confidence.
  • How to Create a Strategy Road Map for Marketing Operations
    Not long ago, few B2B companies had a marketing operations function. Today, this function is becoming an important facet of the marketing organization, enabling it to operate more like a business, with formalized processes, infrastructure, and reporting. Here are three essentials that a marketing operation function should perform.
  • What Social Media Marketing Is Not
    Despite all the talk, the mainstream media coverage, the conferences, courses, and books on social media marketing, there's quite a bit of ambivalence, fear, and (sometimes) outright hostility directed toward social media by CMOs, CEOs, and CFOs. All of this leads to the dreaded "we just want to stick our toe in the water, and see what this stuff is all about" and "we want to do a small, low-budget social media project and track the ROI."
  • Six Sneaky SEO Techniques That Will Get Web Sites Banned
    There are many efficient Search Engine Optimization techniques to optimize your business's Web site, and then there are nefarious methods. These six sneaky techniques will not only ruin your reputation and get your site banned from Google, but could have legal ramifications.
  • Racing Through Recession: Brand Lessons From the Daytona 500
    Every February for the last 50 years, stock car enthusiasts across the country have packed their sunscreen and descended on Daytona. This year, unfortunately, the economy also decided to head south. But fear not, race fans. There is hope for the brand that doesn't want to lose ground in a slowdown. In fact, a lot the same strategies that help NASCAR drivers win on the track can help your company survive the rough recessionary road ahead.
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Twitter, Google Docs and The Connectors
    Marketing with Twitter, Google Docs for SEO, who the Connectors are and why you need them... all that and more in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics as well as what's new on the technology front.
  • The Secret to Creating Compelling Case Studies
    Case studies are a marketer's secret weapon for creating an emotional link with valuable prospects, because compelling case studies invite prospects to place themselves in the story and imagine the rewards of their own successful outcome. A well-told case study makes "getting to yes" easier. Here's how to create one.
  • The Six Cs of Permission Email Marketing, Part 1
    With marketing channels proliferating and messaging devices diversifying, it's not hard to imagine a future where permissions are granted not only by marketing channel (email, postal mail, phone, RSS), but also by content, device, time, and place. All the more reason to genuinely understand "permission," which in the world of email marketing seems relegated to subjective definitions.
  • Unreal Marketing: Violating the Axioms of Authenticity
    As a marketing professional, do you proclaim your offerings to be real or authentic? If so, you may find your customers calling them (and you) fake. So stop it: Don't just say you're real; be real.
  • Four Steps to Driving Value via Customer Engagement and Advocacy (Or: Putting the Relationship Back in Relationship Marketing)
    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...
  • How to Sell the Experience When Features and Benefits Aren't Enough
    Suppose your product features are much like your competitors', and the benefits of using your products or services are similar. Looks like you're on the commodity train. When a typical approach fails to distinguish your business from the pack, it may be time to take your messages into the heart of the customer experience.
  • 12 Global Small Business Trends to Watch in 2008
    Small businesses are the heart and soul of our world entrepreneurial economy. They create, inspire, and fundamentally change people's lives. Here are 12 global small business trends to watch in 2008—trends that can be embraced by any culture and will add value to any nation.
  • Email Marketing and Small Businesses: Waste of Time or Worth The Effort?
    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.
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Blogging for SEO Juice and WordPress Plugins
    How to blog for SEO juice, some killer WordPress plugins, and a Super Bowl Ad wrap-up... all that and more in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics and what's new on the technology front.
  • The State of Customer Focus Around the World: 2007 in Review
    The Net Promoter concept and idea has taken hold the world over. The simplicity of one "ultimate" question is compelling. And it gives CEOs something to easily grasp and point to regarding a customer target. Those who have started to work through this concept have hit some walls, though none of them insurmountable.
  • Email Appending Is More Than a Process
    Most marketers have email addresses for less than half their customers and prospects. If this is the case for your company, it might make sense to explore email appending. Let's first look at the process, and then we'll examine how one publisher implemented its communication plan.
  • In Search, Bigger Is Not Better
    General search engines like Google and Yahoo aren't designed for B2B companies, which is why so many experience disappointing results. Recent developments with smaller Vertical Search Engines (or VSEs) are providing a strong alternative. But, as with any growing industry, it's important to research and understand these alternatives before making the plunge. The advantages of vertical search will go a long way toward providing professionals with relevant business results while also helping advertisers and marketers target a very specific and relevant audience. Following these guidelines can help navigate this important industry trend.
  • How to Keep Up With Social Media: 'Think Liquid' Applied
    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.
  • Four Keys to Developing Digital Marketing Strategies to Meet Your Audience's Needs
    New technologies are becoming increasingly harder to ignore. Today's strategies must address the full spectrum of channels, as they offer unique opportunities for differentiation and for developing real competitive advantage. Mind these four key points to develop a winning digital strategy.
  • How to Successfully Moderate a Conference Panel
    Sadly, the value of most conference panels is questionable, due mostly to the lack of effective moderation. But done well, a panel can be enlightening and instructive and can serve the needs of the audience (and the speakers) equally well. In other words: Yes, there is a right way to moderate a conference panel!
  • The Power of Brand Repositioning: A Four-Phased Process
    So many brands and companies are constantly reinvigorating their businesses and positioning them for growth. There is a constant need to innovate, reinvigorate, update, recalibrate, or just simply fend off the competition in an effort to better explain "why buy me." To move forward, companies and brands need to first take a look at their current brand positioning. But for a moment, even a brief moment, it would make sense to go back to the brand drawing board to answer the question, Just what is brand positioning anyway?
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Some Things You Need to Know About SEO
    What is viral marketing? Is keyword density still a factor in SEO?—that and some other stuff that we've been testing... in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics and what's new on the technology front.
  • Living Branding = The Branded Life
    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.
  • Five Tips for Marketing in a Recession
    Are we in a recession, or poised to enter one? Maybe, maybe not. However, let's assume that the US economy will be in a recession and that as marketers we need to work within that reality. Here are five tips for what you can do to market your products or services in an economic downturn.
  • Three Ways to Take Advantage of the Email Preview Pane
    Do you have the preview pane enabled in your inbox? Many of your email recipients use this setting and some even read most of their emails this way. In short, the preview pane is important email real estate, and you can use it to your advantage. What readers see in this area can influence their decision to open your email to read more or to scroll down to see more.
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls: Not Necessarily the CMO—How to Survive and Thrive Instead
    The role of the Chief Marketing Officer has evolved since some of the first CMOs, such as Mark Mears of Blimpie International and Phil Gospels-Strumpette of Coca-Cola, came on the scene in early 1990s. The CMO role—which initially tended to emphasize advertising, brand management, and market research—continued to evolve over the past 15 years as a result of the emergence of new media, the growing number of sales and service touch points, more complex distribution models, and the fragmentation of customer segments. The CMO has moved from focusing primarily on brands and clever advertising to a larger, more strategic role designed to enable a company to meet the ever-changing needs of a
  • How to Build 'Master-Planned' Customer Communities—Not Shantytowns
    Just as city planners utilize master plans to promote healthy municipal growth, a "Customer Community Master Plan" enables marketing executives to determine an overall customer interaction plan that will allow your company and its relationships to thrive and prosper. In other words, such a master plan avoids pitfalls.
  • Six New Year's Email Marketing Resolutions
    The New Year is in full swing. You've probably made a few personal resolutions, but what about making some resolutions that will help you improve your email marketing? Here's our guide to the six marketing resolutions that will make a difference to your business in 2008.
  • How to Achieve Lasting Improvements in Marketing Effectiveness (Hint: There Are Three Key Areas)
    The scramble to justify budgets can result in a hyper focus on short-term ROI rather than a long-term sustainable path to continuous improvement. In truth, continually improving marketing effectiveness involves addressing three key interrelated, foundational areas.
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Networks, PURLs and a Meatball
    Learn what Metcalfe's Law has to do with marketing and networking, hear some best practices with PURLs, and why January is Tech Geek Nirvana. All that and more in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics and what's new on the technology front.
  • How Email Can Fill up a Store Shopping Cart
    Email can be a great call to action for multichannel customers, particularly in retail but also in B2B marketing. We all know that email can play a powerful role in turning Web researchers and site browsers into buyers. In fact, more and more of our retailer clients are building a specific segment of in-store buyers—and getting results that blow away store managers. Lessons learned in these B2C experiences can also be applied to B2B, especially with the advance of more strategic account management approaches that cross business and geographic boundaries.
  • What Is Your Social Networking Strategy in 2008?
    Are you LinkedIn? Do you Spoke, Ryze, Jigsaw, or ZoomInfo? In 2008, will you get a Second Life? If these social-networking concepts are not on your radar, you are ignoring a dynamic trend that could have a profound impact on key areas of your business, such as revenue growth, talent acquisition and development, and operational efficiency and effectiveness.
  • 8 Career Must-Do's for '08
    This is not an article that offers tips for a job search, per se. Rather, this article offers career management advice, which is applicable whether you are in a job search or happily employed, and even if you own your own business. Here are eight things you should be doing in '08, to potentially boost your earnings, increase your visibility, and create more and better opportunities.
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Copywriting, Online Calendar Services, and New Year Resolutions
    Learn some tips for writing provocative and compelling copy, get some insight into how to best use online calendaring services and how they differ from each other, and make New Year's resolutions that are both important and achievable.
  • Three Reasons to Be Wary of Customer Satisfaction Surveys
    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.
  • 18 Strategies and Tools for Naming Your Business or Product
    Naming. Doesn't matter what you're naming—your product, your business, your Web site or heck, even your child, your choice is important. Here are a flock of—actually, 18—ideas, strategies, and tools to make your name discovery a little easier.
  • How to Make Your Email Program More Productive in 2008
    If you haven't done it yet, now is the perfect time to map out plans for your email program. Any changes you might make in the first few months of the year will stand you in good stead; any plans or changes that you implement in the first quarter should pay dividends for the balance of the year. Here are several actionable ideas.
  • 13 Tips for Tuning Your Web Site to Increase Conversions and Inquiries
    Search engine optimization decrees that there are a certain set of words that people tend to search with. But when those same people arrive on your Web site, a different set of words, called "customer carewords" becomes important. Choosing the right carewords will bring visitors through your Web site... and complete the sale.
  • How Social Media Is Changing the 4Ps of Marketing: Stories From Real Companies
    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.
  • Three Powerful Press Kits (and Why They Work)
    A "press kit" is a collection of a few vital pieces of information that makes it easier for the media to tell your story accurately and with full details. By putting the power of your press kit to work, your company can enjoy more accurate media coverage, more exposure for story ideas, and more complete information through press coverage.
  • MarketingProfs Video: A Tutorial on the Subtleties of LinkedIn
    In the face of mounting competition and hype from rival networks Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn has stayed true to its mission of creating a network for business professionals. I've been a member of the service for years, but until recently it had not had the critical mass necessary to get traction. Over the last six months, however, I've seen a flood of people using the service to connect professionally. As I said, LinkedIn doesn't pretend to be MySpace or Facebook. The design is clean, but a little stark, and it could use a little more personality to make it more engaging. In this video tour, I focus on what LinkedIn does well within its network and how you can apply the same logi
  • Lessons From Warren Buffett: Getting the CEO to (Willingly) Write Checks for Marketing
    Notoriously private, Warren Buffett doesn't have a lot to say publicly, except for his annual letter to shareholders that usually makes the rounds of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and other top publications. However, for his marketing programs, and specifically GEICO commercials, Buffett has an open checkbook.
  • The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say in Email Subject Lines (Plus 100 Others You Shouldn't Use, Either)
    If you've ever heard George Carlin's famous "Seven Dirty Words" you can't say on TV, you can safely avoid using all seven in your subject lines. They will definitely get you blocked. Here is a list of 100 more that you should avoid using as well.
  • Three Critical Questions to Get the Most From Marketing Mix Modeling
    Marketers interested in measuring effectiveness and ROI need to understand whether marketing mix modeling can work for them, or how to get the most from it. Modeling measurements are often considered a bit mysterious. But MMM has long been a reliable measurement for consumer packaged goods companies and is now proving to be a great planning and measurement tool.
  • Moving Madison Avenue: Finding Advertising Ideas Elsewhere
    What will happen when ideas become commodities just like everything else? Some people certainly buy ads from advertising agencies on the strength of the agency's own brand name, but is the value of those brands under threat?
  • MarketingProfs Video: What Is an API?
    Not a day goes by when I don't see complex technical terms thrown around in the press or on blogs. I often wonder whether the average marketer knows what half of these terms mean. This series of articles and videos is aimed at graphically illustrating (this is where the whiteboard comes into play) complex terms in ways that normal, non-geek people can understand. Herein is API (application programming interface). One of the core tenets of Web2.0 is the idea around "open APIs," as you've no doubt heard before. The concept behind the API is really pretty simple when you break it down, as this video explains.
  • Is Wireless Internet Marketing Still a Fantasy?
    There's a new air of excitement behind the mobile Web. Initiatives like Verizon's recent announcement to open their network, Google's Open Handset initiative, new wireless auctions, and the iPhone have energized users. For the intelligent marketer the question must be, "Is mobile the right medium to reach my constituencies?"
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: All About Marketing Automation and Web Analytics
    What is marketing automation? What are the four methods of measuring Web site traffic? Find out in the latest episode of Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics and what's new on the technology front.
  • Recovering the Lost Art of Product Marketing
    With product marketing, your company will be able to prepare the sales channels to relate to the buyer and enable these channels to focus on the most effective messages and programs. You will be able to develop outbound marketing initiatives that move prospects into and through the pipeline to drive revenue and increase customer retention and loyalty. You will have people on your team who are always thinking about how to use what they know about the market and buyers to influence the product strategy. With this change, your marketing will be more than just selling and advertising. It will help you define the target market, position yourself as different and superior in that target market,
  • Five Keys to Using Innovation to Acquire and Retain Customers (Part 3 of 3)
    In Part One and Part Two of this series, the author discussed using "voice of the customer" (VOC) in defining innovative core products and services. The focus was on breakthroughs in the basic product, on hitting the home runs. Here, we take a different perspective—using innovation to acquire and retain customers once the core product or service is defined.
  • New Products: The Real Challenge Is in Execution, Not Strategy
    Marketers love talking about products like the Swiffer or iPod, two colossal successes in terms of brilliance in innovation and new product development. In fact, rumor has it there are more consulting firms taking credit for Swiffer's development and success than can fit into the new Yankee Stadium. The puzzling question remains: Why aren't there more examples of unabashed new product successes?
  • How to Solve Direct Marketing's Five Biggest Problems
    Direct marketers live in an impatient world. A week (maybe two) after a campaign drops, the verdict is in. And if that campaign appears not to be working, it either gets fixed pronto, or the direct marketer gets fired. To avoid being shown the door, the DM manager needs to know how to swiftly solve direct marketing's most common and costly problems.
  • Social Media Starter Kit: The Tools You Need
    Work of any kind requires an understanding of the appropriate tools for the job, and social media is no different. Here are some suggestions for a starter set of social media tools. The actual applications will change, over time, because technology tends to do that. But the basic functions should evolve a little more slowly.
  • How to Expand Your Vision to Include Marketing's New 4 Ps: Pearls, Pumps, Purses & Power
    The traditional marketing mix focused on the 4 Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Today, marketers need to expand their vision to include the new 4 Ps of Pearls, Pumps, Purses, and Power. To capture the $0.85 that women spend out of every dollar, it is time to rethink how marketers are approaching their jobs.
  • How to Use Social Media for Search Engine Optimization
    Customer conversations are everywhere today—social networks, blogs, forums, and other social-media outlets. These are unbiased, unfiltered interactions that can deliver rich information about how your customers talk about topics that are relevant to your company and brand. Though it would be nice if people were to use your company's messaging in their everyday interactions, the reality is that for the most part they don't. Social SEO—tapping into how they talk about you and your industry so that you can determine how they will search—is the most effective and foolproof way to master that art/science/guessing game of picking keywords.
  • Seven Rules for Achieving Higher Online Survey Response Rates
    Online surveys are an increasingly common way to solicit feedback, but response rates are often quite low due to poor survey design, lengthy surveys, requests for personal information, or a lack of incentives for survey completion. So how do you ensure that people respond to your survey? Follow these seven simple rules of engagement.
  • Facebook: Changing Advertising Forever
    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.
  • MarketingProfs-cast: Cece Salomon-Lee on PR's Role in New Media
    The advent of new media poses some challenges for even the best PR professional.
  • MarketingProfs 'Classic Truths': Top Five Do's and Don'ts of Opt-In Email List Building
    We all know some tried-and-true tips and tricks for building an email list. But there are five key points to consider and five glaring points to avoid when creating opt-in lists from the very start.
  • Four Controversial Questions About LinkedIn (and How to Resolve Them)
    Of course you know what LinkedIn is. You already have an account, right? So what's the next step? Here are four thorny questions about LinkedIn (and their related answers) to help you get the most out of this professional social networking tool.
  • How Marketing Can Earn a Seat at the Revenue Table
    Marketing is suffering from a crisis of credibility. So what can marketers do to be seen as part of a machine that drives revenue and profits, not just the people who throw parties and buy swag?
  • MarketingProfs Video: Seesmic Presages Video as a Personal Communication Tool
    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.
  • The 10 Biggest Business Blunders (and How You Can Avoid Them)
    Here are the 10 biggest business blunders, and advice on how you can avoid them sinking you (and your company).
  • The Five Simple Rules of Green Marketing
    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!
  • 30 Tips for Creating a Digital Press Kit
    Given the ease of online publishing, there's no excuse for a company not to have a current, effective press kit. But why are press kits missing from so many Web sites? What's their real value? What must absolutely must be in your press kit? And what should you leave out? Here are the details that make all the difference.
  • MarketingProfs Video: Simplifying AJAX for Marketers
    Complex technical terms are often thrown around in the media or on blogs. Does the average marketer know what half of these terms mean? This series is aimed at illustrating (this is where the whiteboard comes into play) complex terms in ways that normal, non-geeks can understand. In this installment, we take a look at AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JAvasript and XML. As a marketer, you don't need to know about Javascript, which is a programming language, nor do you really need to know about XML, which is a data storage standard. But the asynchronous part is what is interesting. It allows Web pages to behave in a more dynamic, application-like manner. Google's Reader, Mail and Docu
  • MarketingProfs Podcast on Pay-per-Click: Boom or Bust?
    Is pay-per-click losing momentum? Are people numbing to pay-per-click ads as they have to banner ads? Is growth in the channel waning, or is it just maturing? Hear Steve Rubel and Alan Rimm-Kaufman debate the issue; Alan is a fan of pay-per-click, while Steve has his doubts.
  • Five Key Steps to Measuring Your Lead-Nurturing Initiative
    Whether you are campaigning to gain budget approval to implement your nurturing strategy or need to illustrate ROI for an existing nurturing program (or you are just trying to evaluate your current tactics) effective measurement of your nurturing program is critical. Outlined below are five steps to measure your nurturing initiative and start having it be viewed as a profit center rather than a cost center.
  • Three Powerful Press Kits (and Why They Work)
    Press kits are like business cards. If you don't have one, you have no way to make an introduction and no way to provide valuable information to people with whom you want to do business. A press kit is a collection of a few vital pieces of information that makes it easier for the media to tell your story accurately and with full details. By putting the power of your press kit to work, your company can enjoy more accurate media coverage, more exposure for story ideas, and more complete information through press coverage.
  • MarketingProfs Video: A Tutorial on the Subtleties of LinkedIn
    LinkedIn doesn't pretend to be MySpace or Facebook. In the face of mounting competition and hype from rival networks, LinkedIn has stayed true to its mission of creating a network for business professionals. In this video tour, Matt Dickman focuses on what LinkedIn does well, and how you can leverage its strengths.
  • MarketingProfs-Cast on Conversational Marketing: Irrational Exuberance, or Next Big Thing?
    In a recent blog post, Cymfony's Jim Nail wrote about a study that provocatively proclaimed that spending on conversational marketing will outpace traditional marketing by 2012. Is that even possible? To find out, Paul Dunay chatted with Jim and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice-president at Nielsen Online Strategic Services. What ensued was a very lively debate about whether marketers are prepared to support conversational marketing—and the answer isn't very pretty. As Jim and Pete point out, not only are marketers not using Web 2.0 tools to create a conversation, but to even listen effectively they need to overhaul their infrastructures—big time.
  • Seven Ways to Monitor Blog Conversations
    Do you know what your customers are saying about you? If not, you (and your brand!) are at a distinct disadvantage. Take the opportunity to participate in the blogosphere -- even if only on a small scale -- and you'll help shape your brand, rather than having it be shaped exclusively by your customers.
  • MarketingProfs 'Classic Truths': Sex! Why Getting Your Attention Isn't Always Enough
    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!
  • How to Explain OpenSocial to Your Executives
    If you are someone who is partially or wholly responsible for the long-term direction of your Web site, or the Web sites of your clients, you have to be able to explain Google's OpenSocial in clear and concise terms. So what is OpenSocial? And why does it matter?
  • How Marketing Can Lead the Charge for Business Innovation
    Long-term corporate success is linked to the ability to innovate, and Marketing should play a more central role. Who is better positioned to give insight into who will buy, how many they will buy, why they buy, and when specific markets will buy? It is time for marketing executives and professionals to step into a leadership role and lead the innovation charge!
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Eduardo Conrado, Using Thought Leadership to Position Motorola
    Eduardo Conrado is the Vice President of Global Business and Technology Marketing & Communications for Motorola. His role encompasses three of Motorola's four primary businesses with revenues of over $17 billion: Home & Networks Mobility, Government & Public Safety, and Enterprise Mobility. Eduardo controls the marketing for all of Motorola's enterprise B2B products worldwide. Here, he discussses his approach to thought leadership as well as how he defines success. He also offers insights into which Web 2.0 tactics are working for his teams around the globe.
  • 11 Lessons Learned From Podcasting
    Podcasting can give your company a new image and personality. And, increasingly, podcasting offers the promise of being another highly effective way to reach and develop potential customers. That's only if you can produce compelling, "buzz-worthy" content, of course.
  • 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 orgy, almost: Every company wants a close relationship with me, and they want one with you, too. They want close relationships with their business buyers and suppliers. Of course, as the name spells out, what they really want to do is "manage" these close relationships. There's one small thing missing from all this talk about customer relationships, both on and off the web. Not every customer (and, in particular, not every business customer or supplier) wants a close relationship, nor do they want to be managed.
  • Halloween Email Advice: How to Revive Your Dead Subscribers
    Are dead email addresses haunting your open and click-through rates? If once-active recipients have stopped opening your emails, are no longer actively reading your messages, or aren't clicking on email links, those recipients are no longer in the land of the living. In the spirit of Halloween, here's some advice to determine whether your dying email list can be saved.
  • MarketingProfs Podcast: Is Twitter a Valuable Tool, or Waste of Time?
    Is microblogging the latest fad or the next big thing? Microblogging is just like regular blogging, except it's limited to 140 characters. The leader in the space is Twitter. To get a better sense of this emerging social media tool, we assembled a micro-panel to discuss it: Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst on social computing at Forrester Research and a fan of Twitter, and David Berkowitz, director of emerging media at 360i, who is skeptical about Twitter's application to business. We hope you enjoy the lively debate!
  • How Social Media Is Changing the 4Ps of Marketing: Stories from Real Companies
    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.)
  • MP 'Classic Truths': If You Don't Measure, You Can't Manage: The Best Metrics for Managing Marketing Performance
    Without metrics to track performance, marketing and business plans are ineffective. For marketers, three primary metrics stand out as a starting point for tracking their performance. Once companies are aware of their competitive position, their desired outcomes, and what it will take to achieve those outcomes, companies will be better able to identify the success factors, benchmarks, and appropriate metrics to meet their target.
  • How Nike Women's Marathon Wins the Gold in Marketing to Women
    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.
  • What Is Advertising's Most Important Word?
    What is advertising's most important word? The simple, innocuous word "like": a nondescript word that carries with it all the conceptualization power you need to create a business identity, to form a brand personality, and to position your product or service in the mind of your audience.
  • How to Influence Marketing Decisions When Your Boss Is Dead Wrong
    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.
  • A 10-Step Program for Search Engine Fitness
    There's no silver bullet for search engine optimization. You need to do the right things over and over, over extended periods of time. Key among these are generating relevant content, gaining inbound links, and designing and coding for search friendliness. Perform these 10 exercises to start your program of search engine fitness.
  • The Experts' Guide to Becoming a Recognized Expert: Get Great Speaking Gigs to Build Your Reputation
    Your reputation can be greatly enhanced and reinforced by speaking at industry events. This article provides a checklist to help you win valuable speaking gigs. Invest some time in getting on the stage, and it will pay off many times over in helping you build your business. Follow the tips and tricks herein to maximize the benefits.
  • MarketingProfs Videos: What Is Digg?
    What is Digg? And how does it work? This pair of videos about social-network site Digg.com is a look at the site from the inside-out... with the goal of educating marketers on this social network. Learn why you should (or shouldn't) care about Digg.
  • Micro Branding—Macro Results
    The better you are at involving your customers in the philosophy of your brand, the better they'll understand why you're special.
  • The New Rules of Internet Marketing
    Understanding how the Internet changes the rules of marketing is a huge challenge for CEOs: Which practices are obsolete? What new opportunities should be pursued? How do we define success in this new scenario?
  • Going Global in a Web 2.0 World: A Punch List for Small Business
    In a world that is now fully connected, people and businesses are putting their opinions, observations, insights, thoughts, and capabilities online, via some very helpful tools. Here's what one fictitious small business did to grow its customer base, and reach potential customers worldwide.
  • MP Classic: 10 Online Writing Concepts That Work Wonders Offline, Too
    In this MarketingProfs Classic, originally published in April of 2003, Suzan St. Maur highlights 10 online writing concepts that also kick offline. "After all the agonies we suffered some years ago when some tried to make offline text work online, we've finally turned the tables," she writes. "Now we can borrow back a number of online writing concepts and use them to sharpen up our paper-based marketing communications."
  • MarketingProfs Video: RSS—REALLY Simplified
    Marketers may be from Venus and IT might be from Mars, but marketers nonetheless need to understand what the IT guys are talking about. In a new series of short videos, Matt Dickman simplifies technobabble into a framework that marketers can understand. The next time IT speaks "geek," you can surprise them with your knowledge instead of just nodding along.
  • How to Reach Facebook's Millions of Members in Nine Easy Steps
    Facebook is the hot social-networking site of the moment. With the site's incredible growth in recent months, many marketers are scrambling to find a way to access the site's millions of users, who could be potential customers. Here are the steps to successfully use Facebook to better reach and understand your customers, as a fellow member of the community.
  • What Is Your 'Return on Marketing Integrity'?
    Marketers need to consider a new calculus: "return on marketing integrity"—that is, a new type of "ROMI"—which can lead to stronger business performance.
  • How to Size and Build a Sales Territory
    Companies should (and can!) implement a sustainable, consistent telephone prospecting program to develop a "sales territory" using an approach that sales reps will actually adopt. If telephone prospecting controls the destiny of your business, you should investigate a better way to control your telephone prospecting. Start here.
  • Which Comes First: The Policy or the Blog?
    Should a marketer simply start blogging or wait instead until all of the blogging policies and procedures are established before beginning? In other words: Which comes first the policy or the blog?
  • MarketingProfs Book Club: Q&A with 'Robin Hood Marketing' Author
    The MarketingProfs Book Club is back! "Robin Hood Marketing" shows how to sell your cause as successfully as the great marketers of corporate America sell their brands and products. Here's how nonprofits can "steal" tactics from the big brands.
  • Fueling the Engine of Sales Success: Five Keys to Sustainable Self-Motivation
    Beaten down by a constant stream of customer "No's," some salespeople find it difficult to pick themselves up and jump back in the game. But there are other salespeople whose motivation and resilience enable them to make every customer call as enthusiastically as if it were the first. For the majority of us who, perhaps, fall somewhere in the middle, there is an opportunity to increase "motivational intelligence" by keeping in mind five simple principles.
  • Killer Web Content Examples
    Out of 18 choices, why does one piece of content get 49% of the vote while another gets 0%?
  • Breaking News: Advertising Is Dead!
    Advertising is dead. Consumers have been over-advertised to and over-sold. So what's a marketer to do?
  • Partnership Brand Marketing—It's About Distribution Channels
    Today many companies and brands are engaging in "Partnership Marketing," "Marketing Alliances," "Strategic Partnerships," and even "Partnership Brand Marketing" programs. But often they boil down to just promotions, perhaps maybe even on a larger scale. But the true success of partnership brand marketing lies in its power to open up new and alternative channels of distribution for both the companies and the brands involved.
  • A Web Site Without Video Is Like...
    ...television without sound, romance without kisses, the rumba without rhythm, a joke without a punch line. If your Web site disappointments, you need something that provides the eureka factor.
  • MP Classic: Three Steps to Great Copy
    In this MP Classic, originally published in 2002, Nick Usborne debunks the notion that the secret to good copy is using certain words or phrases. Saying as much suggests "that if I had access to the *exact* set of brushes and paints used by Picasso, I could become a great painter," Nick writes. However, there are some simple steps you can take that, when taken in the right sequence, really can improve your copy.
  • A Glimpse Into the Future of Advertising: Japan's Dentsu
    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.
  • Web Site Creation and the Eye of the Spider
    There is quite a difference in what is seen by humans on a Web site and what is seen by a search engine "spider" a program that routinely combs the Internet indexing Web sites. An untold numbers of expensive Web sites out there are beautiful to behold from a human perspective, yet all but invisible to search engine spiders (and thus searchers). Here is a small list of common Web site elements, in two categories: what search engines cannot see, and what they can see.
  • Selling Professional Services? It's All About Leverage
    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.
  • Eight Things to Do Right Now to Get More out of LinkedIn
    You've heard of it, you've read about it, you've even signed up for it—and you still wonder how to get the most out of it. LinkedIn is the most popular business networking environment around. Its jump from 13 million signups to 14 million happened in about a month. Here are eight things you should do today to start getting more out of the dynamic platform of LinkedIn.
  • Business Aikido: Gaining Strategic Advantage Through Leverage
    In Aikido, martial arts students study and practice katas—pre-arranged movements that enable them to deal with an opponent successfully. The centuries-old art teaches practitioners to use the force of an opponent against the opponent. This strategy gives the student a definite advantage if they are attacked. In a similar way, what were considered strengths in Web 1.0 have become weaknesses in Web 2.0. Now, agility and intellect are critical. There are several things businesses need to pay attention to if they're going to thrive in this environment.
  • How to Use Effective Keyword Choices as the Foundation for a Powerhouse Web Site
    For any online business, the goal of search engine marketing is to achieve high rankings in the major search engines for keyword phrases specific to the products or services offered. What's more, it's just as crucial to ensure that the keywords chosen are the ones most likely to convert to sale or action. Traffic is great - sales are even better! Here's where to start.
  • Marketing to Small Businesses: What You Need to Know
    You might be an expert when it comes to marketing to large businesses. But selling your products and services to smaller companies requires an entirely different strategy.
  • New Interest in, and New Tools for Measuring, Customer Satisfaction
    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.
  • Wiki Your Way to More Search Engine Real Estate
    It's well known that a page-one search placement on Google, Yahoo, or MSN is imperative for driving organic traffic to your Web site. But if you're already in the enviable top spot position, is there something more you can do to gain even more traffic? There is, and aggressive web players are implementing the strategy effectively. Here's how.
  • Beyond the 4Ps: The 5Ts of Marketing Operations
    What constitutes marketing operations? Marketing operations adds an emerging dimension to the marketing mix. Enabled by new processes and technology, it goes beyond the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and 3Cs (Customers, Competitors, Corporation), to fully round out the marketing mix.
  • Five Outstanding Client Referral Tactics (and Action Steps)
    Here are five powerful referral strategies—and precise action steps—that, when used either individually or collectively, can cause a flood of new introductions.
  • 18 Web Marketing Concepts That Make a Difference
    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.
  • MP Classic: Four Ways to Get More out of Your Annual Planning and Budgeting
    In this MarketingProfs Classic, Jim Lenskold reminds us that, since the dreaded annual planning and budgeting process isn't going away, it's time to make the effort to get more value out of the process. Jim writes, "Here are four ways to use financial insight to create more profitable strategies and tactical plans while building greater credibility with your executive team."
  • Three Simple Ways to Add 'Personal Power' to Your Emails
    Almost without exception, the automated emails sent to confirm an action a customer has just taken are uniformly drab and impersonal. Which is a crying shame because when a customer first gives you his or her email address, you have a small window of opportunity: Customers are expecting a confirmation email from you. They are waiting for it. And when it arrives, almost 100% of people will open it. In other words, this is your first and best chance to make a great impression. Here are three things you can do to give some "personal power" to any email communication.
  • Outsourcing and Delegating: Two Keys to Excelling in Your Career
    Marketers often lament, "If only I had more time...." Improving your productivity by using something like GTD (Getting Things Done) will take you part of the way there. But you also need to become ruthless at delegating. The more effectively you delegate, the faster you will excel in your career.
  • Which Metrics Measure Marketing's Impact on Business and Influence Strategic Direction?
    Results from a recent survey found that only 17% of us indicated that our CEOs would give marketing an A. What's more, this study and others continue to suggest that a gap remains between a company's business goals and the metrics marketing uses to measure their impact on these goals. The need and opportunity remains for marketing to improve the linkage between marketing expenditures and delivered results. But what should we measure? And which metrics are best?
  • Repackage, Rebrand & Relaunch? Or Do We Need to Dig Deeper?
    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... .
  • The Death of the PR Handler in a Viral Environment
    At a time when business and marketing strategy changes at the speed of light, and competitors, partners and customers have instant access to information, the days of the handler the publicist are numbered.
  • Make Every Word Count: Q&A With Jonathan Kranz
    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.
  • New Interactive Tools and Tactics for the B2B Marketer
    In an online sales environment that is both increasingly competitive and cluttered, B2B marketers must be able to perform two critically important tasks: They must communicate a unique brand identity, and they must be agile enough to quickly customize lead generation and communication programs to meet their measurable objectives. These tasks can be especially challenging for small-to-medium-sized B2B firms, as well as for divisions of very large firms. Here's where they are turning for help.
  • The CFO as Brand Ambassador? It's Possible, and Here's How
    Kronos had an obvious identity problem that clearly impacted its sales performance, so getting support from the executive suite for a branding initiative should have been a slam-dunk. Except not quite. While everyone agreed there was a brand problem, the solution was costly and very long-term. Here's how Marketing won over Management, by talking a language they understood.
  • Five More Keys to Engaging the Customer to Produce Real Innovation: Lessons From LEGO (Part 2 of 3)
    Part one of this three-part series examined the overall role the customer can (and should!) play in innovation. Here is a deeper look at five specific ways that Marketing can engage the customer in the innovation process, using examples from LEGO, a company that has used these techniques with clear and brilliant success.
  • Getting Old-Fashioned Buzz With New Media: Q&A With Paul Dunay
    Paul has earned his keep over the past 20 years by building buzz for heavyweights like Google, IBM, and Microsoft. These days he's immersed himself in social media, which serves him well as the director of Global Field & Interactive Marketing for BearingPoint. In this one-on-one, he gives us the lowdown on how to use social media to kick-start your buzz marketing efforts.
  • Blazing Trails to Brand Leadership
    How come some brands are great, while others manage to be just good? Is there a trick up the sleeves of those great brands—a trick that good, sustainable brands can adopt to become equally well-known? The answer is yes.
  • Create Compelling Business Stories in Three Simple Steps
    Stories aren't just for campfires and school children. They're a powerful way for businesses to communicate their value, to create an emotional hook that sticks. Nordstrom's and HP have used them effectively to convey outstanding customer service (the former) and innovation (the latter). Yet most businesses remain tongue-tied—not because they don't have stories to tell, but because they don't know how to tell them. But you don't have to be a writer to create an effective business story. In fact, all it takes is three simple steps.
  • What Web Marketers Should Know About Twitter
    If you're responsible for the direction of the online strategies for your company or organization, you've probably been hearing buzz about Twitter, a next-generation instant messaging tool. Even if you're new to Twitter, this article will serve as a guide to educate you to help you make a decision, by linking to resources and providing a starting point for your strategy.
  • Why It's Important to Write Transitions From One Web Page to the Next
    Site visitors rarely want to view just one page on your site, except in the case of landing pages or single-page sites. If people actually want to get something done on your site, they will generally work through two or three different pages before taking an action. So here is the question of the day: How well do your pages work together? Or to put it another way: How strong is the transition between your pages?
  • 25 Metrics to Prove Marketing Drives Sales
    Driving sales is what B2B marketing is all about. Although the precise roles and responsibilities of Marketing may differ from company to company, your marching orders are the same: Help Sales produce more with less. All marketers want to know best practices and share experiences about driving sales. Here are 25 metrics you should select from to prove marketing drives sales... and to track progress.
  • Personalized Search: All's Well... or Orwell?
    Google is now (and has been for some time) collecting data on individual users, and they are assuming that users will trust them with this data to "Do No Evil," as their famous slogan goes. Only time will tell whether the trust is well-placed.
  • Maximizing Your Web Site's Effectiveness: Q&A with Karen Breen Vogel, CEO of ClearGauge
    With the rise of social media and user-generated content, there are more factors than ever to consider when designing a company Web site. Throw in SEO and choosing the proper design/layout for your Web site, and it all gets very confusing... very quickly. Which means that Web site optimization experts such as Karen Breen Vogel are in very high demand. Vogel understands how to lead organic traffic to Web sites—but, perhaps more importantly, she understands how to give those users the content they are looking for when they arrive. Here Vogel cuts through the clutter and gives invaluable advice on how to build disciplined Web site optimization programs that build on strengths and business ob
  • Five Steps: How to Mine for Net Promoter Gold by Listening Hard to Detractors
    If you are adopting Net Promoter as part of your survey/metrics approach, there's a rich part of the findings that many who are implementing this approach don't consider: learning from your "Detractors." Here, Jeanne Bliss focuses on Detractors, and how to mine the gold by listening hard to their feedback to improve your organization and relationship with your customers.
  • How to Use Email Segmentation to Shorten the Sales Cycle
    Selling now takes more time and resources then ever before. In fact, the sales cycle has become 22% longer as buyers more carefully consider their decisions. If this true for you, then consider it a great opportunity for email marketing segmentation strategies. By segmenting your prospects, you can boost revenue, improve conversion from email marketing, strengthen buyer satisfaction, and build your brand. Sound like a tall order for a segmentation strategy? Consider these ideas.
  • Prospect Follow-Up: The Need for Speed
    People are often in a rush to get their needs fulfilled. Decision-makers want things done yesterday. In other words: Responding to prospects in a timely manner is critical for customer acquisition and retention. Whether companies manage B2C or B2B relationships, the first businesses to reply to customer inquiries have a better chance at scoring than those who ignore them or respond too late. Has your company established prospect follow-up protocols and standards? Begin by answering these questions.
  • Marketing to Women—We've Come a Long Way Baby... (Maybe)
    Savvy companies like Dove, Ponds, and Nike know that women are empowered, and those companies have shown us how powerful the images and stories of real women are. What's next on the Marketing to Women horizon?
  • Six Reasons Why Every Brand Needs a Message (and a Messenger)
    Jerry Bader doesn't drink. But if he did, he'd start with Reyka Vodka—not because it's better or worse than any other vodka, but because the company has an extraordinary marketing campaign and an equally clever integrated Web site with an enchanting (if somewhat bizarre) Icelandic spokeswoman. The video commercials for the campaign drew 20,000 views in the first three weeks after being posted on YouTube, and they hold some interesting lessons for marketers.
  • Naked Branding
    Does sex sell? You bet it does. But there's another essential element that goes hand-in-hand with sex. And that's controversy.
  • Six Tips for Building Better E-Commerce Customer Relationships: If You Build It, Will They Come?
    Looking at the robust projections for online shopping, it would be tempting to think that if you build it, they will come. Yet marketers must resist temptation and take a more strategic approach—one that focuses on customer experience. The truth is, from a functional and ease-of-use perspective, all e-commerce sites are not created equal.
  • Making Market Research Useful... Not Just Interesting
    A wise but anonymous marketer once said that a market research report that gets described as "interesting" has failed. It's only when it's "useful" that it gets the pass mark. After all, what's the point of interesting research if it can't be put to use? The sad truth is that most market research is not very useful and more often than not ends up as a door stop for the marketing manager's office. Here's how to avoid that result.
  • What's Next in Social Media: Q&A with Josh Hallett
    Many companies have by now launched initial social media initiatives and are looking to move their efforts to the next step. This is where social media experts such as Josh Hallett come in. Here, Hallett helps demystify this form of "new marketing," particularly for those companies who have dipped their toes in the social media waters and are wondering, "What now?"
  • 10 Innovation Ideas When You Are on a Deadline
    "You can't sit around and wait for inspiration," said Jack London. "You have to go after it with a club." Pick up your club (your pencil, your laptop, your sketchbook) and let's go. Whatever your particular challenge, these 10 strategies can help you innovate—on a deadline.
  • Seven Ways Your Company Can Harness the Power of Blogs
    Blogging is a phenomenon that can no longer be ignored by today's competitive companies. So how does your company best harness the power of blogs? Here are common-use cases for any organization.
  • 13 Winning Ways to Make Enemies in the Press
    Without working too hard, company management can cultivate a cadre of enemies within the press. To do the task well, however, you should follow a set of 13 simple guidelines that will ensure that you alienate many, or most, of the Fourth Estate.
  • What the Web Marketer Should Know About Facebook
    If you're responsible for the direction of your online strategies for your company or organization, you've probably been asked by your colleagues to take a look at a social network. If you're new to the Facebook phenomenon, this will serve as a guide for you to get started, link to resources to help, and provide an overview as a web decision maker. But first, what is Facebook?
  • Five Keys to Engaging the Customer to Produce Real Innovation (Part 1 of 3)
    How can marketing professionals engage the customer to produce ideas for radical innovation? Marketing's leadership should materialize in five ways.
  • How to Brand Yourself in a Competitive Job Market: Q&A with William Arruda
    An increasingly competitive job market in recent years has led to the birth of the idea of "personal branding," as jobseekers look for ways to stand out to potential employers. One of the leaders of this burgeoning space is William Arruda, coauthor of the bestseller Career Distinction. Arruda's philosophy centers on identifying and communicating the unique value you can bring to an employer. If done correctly, your reputation and credibility will help you stand out from the crowd, and create an environment in which job opportunities come to you.
  • The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say in Email Subject Lines (Plus 100 Others You Shouldn't Use, Either)
    If you've ever heard George Carlin's famous "Seven Dirty Words" you can't say on TV, you can safely avoid using all seven in your subject lines. They will definitely get you blocked. Here are 100 more you should avoid using as well.
  • We Know Our Net Promoter Score: Now What?
    There is a frenzied optimism on the simplicity and potency of the new NetPromoter concept. But beware, if your end game is simply pushing for the greatest NetPromoter score�know that at the end of the day this may just be the latest of your corporations' customer scoreboards. As with any customer feedback system, it's what you do with the information that's key.
  • PowerPoint, Warts and All: Relearning to Communicate
    PowerPoint recently (and quietly) celebrated its 20th birthday. Why do some people love it while others passionately hate it? And how can we learn from its strength and its limitations, to be better and more effective communicators?
  • Under Pressure: Moving From Traditional to Digital Media
    By now you've all heard—Internet ad spending is up, spending on traditional media is down. With so much attention given to Web 2.0 and its technology-enabled marketing tactics, marketers using traditional approaches are under increased pressure to become more digital and technology driven.
  • Does Web 2.0 Make Copy and Content Less Important?
    If your users generate content, what's the role of the professional web writer?Is an online copywriter or web writer any longer relevant for a site that generates a lot of its content through user contributions? Nick thinks so. In fact, he says that the job of the web writer becomes even more critical.
  • What Under Armour and Trojan Know About Gender-Specific Marketing
    A few more traditionally male-oriented brands are connecting with the women's market in clever ways, and it is worth taking note of their approaches. Take, for instance, the Under Armour and Trojan brands, each of which has relatively new ad campaigns that bear this out. In both cases, the brands dialed into the specifics of the humor, tone, message, and design they know to be effective for their existing typically male market, but they developed approaches that definitely invited women into that conversation.
  • Six Questions to Inspire a Successful Marketing Story
    Every company has a story to tell, but how do marketers figure out the best way to tell it, in a compelling way? Here are six questions that will help you develop your marketing story.
  • Your Marketing Campaign: What's the Big Idea?
    You're rolling out a marketing campaign. Launching a product. Revitalizing your brand. What's the big idea? Not to sound flippant, but you need one. Because without it, it's likely your campaign, product launch, or brand repositioning won't be memorable—or particularly effective. Here's where to start.
  • A Five-Step Customer Experience Mapping Process to Improve Customer Retention
    Creating a customer experience map compels a company to take a customer-centric view. By identifying, mapping, and measuring the customer experience, you are able to identify and address any gaps and disconnects within your organization that you customers might experience. To realistically measure the customer experience, however, you need to establish and follow a disciplined process that will reveal what truly matters to your customers. The process entails the following five steps.
  • How (and Why) to Get the Word Out about Your Brand and the Environment
    Consumers are beginning to take environmental impact into consideration in purchase decisions. Businesses that demonstrate environmental responsibility have the opportunity to contribute favorably to their images while aligning themselves with the preferences of their customers. To get the full value out of green practices over time, companies need to let the public know what they are doing and why it matters.
  • Wanted: Catalysts for Co-Creation
    In today's ever-changing, increasingly interactive media world, marketers are captivated by a new business buzzword: "consumer-generated content." While word-of-mouth has always been powerful, consumer-accessible technology (the Internet, podcasting, video production, social networks, etc.) puts it on steroids. Success in this new world order requires marketers to develop a new perspective, a new skill set, and a new role in consumers' lives.
  • The New Market Power: A Democratic Exchange
    Market power used to be much like a big castle surrounded by high walls and a moat to control access. If the old-school world was the castle and the moat, the new model is more like an aerial view of San Francisco—lots of paths in and out.
  • Navigating the Emerging 'VirtuReality' Market
    Last month, Kwik-E-Mart's opened around the country. You know, the one from the imaginary world of The Simpsons? What's more, the Geico Cavemen have their own sitcom, and fictitious TV-character blogs like Monk's are things that real viewers can comment on. You don't have to be a Twitter-head or a Second-Lifer to see the melding of your real and virtual experiences into one. What's this mean for marketers?
  • 'Bounce Rate' as the Sexiest Web Metric Ever
    It might seem farfetched to characterize a metric as sexy. But by the time you are done reading this article you'll be more than attracted to the metric. Are you are spending tons of time, energy, and budget on Web marketing efforts but your conversion rates (or ROI) are stuck in the 2-4% range? You may be trying really hard to figure out how to improve the performance, but you might be stymied by the fact that there is ton of data and you have no idea where to start. Looking at the bounce rate is a good place to begin.
  • Eight Steps to Creating a Successful Online Community
    Online social communities are all the rage. Sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook have grabbed headlines over the past year or so as examples of how to create successful communities. As a result, many businesses have tried to emulate these sites and create vibrant online networks... with mixed results. If you aim to create a successful online community, follow these key steps to ensure your success.
  • Search Engine Marketing: Outsource or In-House?
    The Search Engine Optimization market is over $10 billion in North America alone. The biggest question isn't whether you should utilize Search, but rather who will manage your campaigns. What should your organization do? It depends. When you review your options for in-house or outsourced Search or pay-per-click bid management, consider the following.
  • Search Engine Optimization for Google's Universal Search: Back to Square One?
    Organic search engine optimization, until recently, had been a fairly straightforward endeavor. That changed in the middle of May 2007, when Google began rolling out its "Universal Search." This new search option may have long-term repercussions for every search engine optimization company if it becomes the standard.
  • How To Create a Video Campaign Concept
    If you want to be cutting edge, the way to do it is with audio and video.
  • How to Write a Strong Sales Message and Still Achieve 'Risk Reversal'
    There are two of the things you need to do with an effective sales page: You need to write a strong sales message, and you need to minimize the perception of risk. In other words, you need to write compelling sales copy, at the same time keeping anxiety levels at a minimum. Here's how.
  • ROI Marketing: Are You Prepared?
    No matter how savvy the marketer, the impact that ROI marketing will have on the corporate culture can be an eye-opening experience. ROI isn't just a nifty tool to keep vendors in line. The infrastructure frameworks that serve the ROI model will lay bare the decisions of everyone who touches the marketing program, and that includes you. So what must you be prepared to do if and when your company embarks on the lofty quest of ROI marketing?
  • Blogging Baby Steps: How to Join the Conversation Without Starting Your Own
    There is a healthy respect and fear-factor surrounding the blogosphere, een for those of us with some background in online community building. So let's start with some baby steps. Step one: Listen first, and then join the conversation.
  • Six Keys to Lead-Generation Success
    Lead generation is an important function, yet one of the least understood and most mismanaged in many organizations. Why is that so, and what can you do to put in place a best-in-class lead generation program? Here are six keys to getting lead generation right.
  • Dynamite Branding
    As YouTube, Google and MySpace announce that video advertising will become a key driver in their future revenue strategies, the glitzy, anonymous ads we have been used to for years will have to change cours