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What's your Return On Sound? Budgets may be tight and long-term planning may feel out of reach, but a few simple principles can help lay the groundwork for long-term brand value for "sonic identity." Music and sound create significant long-term brand power. That effect comes by design, and it starts with a few questions.

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Sears performed a courageous email-marketing act in mid-December. Like every retailer, Sears was surely eager for additional sales and revenue as the worst holiday season in memory reached a crescendo and the sale window started to close. Despite that pressure, the Sears team had the discipline to hit the pause button on the hard sell in attempting to make a connection with subscribers. Instead, it sent a co-marketing email with Heroes at Home, promoting a national gift registry for returning US soldiers.

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Social media is changing many aspects of business from how we talk to our customers to how we listen to the people who make our livelihoods possible. Over that past several years, social media marketing has been elevated to a degree of credibility within public relations, marketing communications and customer service. The information from the raw

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Microsoft has a myopic view of the world. If I personalized the company as a human being, I'd say is self-centered. If it were a child, I'd assume it is an child, unwilling to share toys with others. In fact, I think Microsoft needs some parental I am one of those dinosaurs still using Publisher software

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I'm sure you've heard the maxim that it costs a lot more to get a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. It makes perfect sense, right? So why is it that we spend so much time and money in violation of that At the recent Email Evolutions , direct marketing legend Stan

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As newspapers continue their struggle to cling to life, might they turn to philanthropic sources for much-needed capital? I've been for a while, probably with misplaced optimism, about the future of newspapers, but this might be a A recent article in Online Journalism tells how newspapers and local broadcasters may soon seek support from non-profit foundations

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According to findings by the CMO Council, as reported in a recent article, CMOs "don't know how to use customer input to improve operations, products and processes." The study, "Giving Customer Voice More Volume" was based on a survey with about 500 senior marketer respondents from major Here's how the respondents' numbers stacked up in the

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There are a number of ways to measure the success of a Word-of-Mouth marketing campaign on the Web. Start by looking in the right place: where the target audience congregates online.

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Knowing what to improve and by how much is vital to establishing realistic performance targets and metrics. This two-part article discusses how to use benchmarking to assess your organization's performance and to understand what changes to make. Part 1 defined benchmarking and explored its value. This second and final part identifies marketing capabilities and process that can be benchmarked and outlines the five phases associated with a successful benchmarking initiative.

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A few basic thoughts advertisers should consider for the 2010 Super Bowl: • Who watches the Super Bowl? Approximately 100 million viewers, with more than 40 percent of them women. • Who spends the most money as a consumer? Women spend approximately 85 percent; men spend only 15 percent. • Who focuses more on the game—and who on the commercials? Though many women love football, and a lot of men enjoy seeing the new commercials, women focus more on the commercials... and men more on the game. The 2009 Super Bowl commercials were far below my expectations.

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Your company may already have more than enough traffic on your Web site to achieve your business goals, but the problem is that you may have a leaky Web site: Prospects and customers are visiting your Web site, but very few are taking the next step to do business with you. Here's how to plug the leaks.

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One of the benefits of being a tenured academic is the sabbatical. This is time when you get to do what you like, and get paid for it. Most academics take the time to think and write, retool for new research projects or teach at other universities. In 2000, I took my sabbatical at You might

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I recently had my Twitter influence by and the results said it was apparent but I admit being put off at first. I mean, it sounded "clinical," like a doctor had just taken my pulse and told the family, "It's apparent, but low," as in, "We don't expect him to last The funny thing is, I

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You're redesigning your website. Fabulous! Who's taking care of the Yes, yes, of course, you need more intuitive navigation, and your design is tired and needs a facelift, but what about your content? In too many web redesigns, planning for content comes last, when it should come Users visit websites for content – to read, to

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"Won't this content that we're publishing be giving away too much to our or "Our customers are going to take this great information that we're publishing and use it to shop our Are two very common objections that I often hear when introducing an organization to Thought Leadership Marketing. They are both logical concerns, I agree,

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You probably receive your fair share of pitches from vendors at work. Nothing wrong with pitches. A well-crafted pitch is brief, polite, and written taking the seat of the person who is going to read it. It should really answer the question "so what?" better than anything else you do. After all, you're trying to make

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chooses the Oscar for the "Best Picture" each year based on a host of subjective criteria, including (I'm guessing) the quality of cinematography, the brilliance of the screenplay, and ethereal performances delivered by outstanding actors. Great stories beautifully told get Oscar This works for the Oscars. It doesn't

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If you are like me, it can get incredibly overwhelming to keep up with business books. So many publish in any given year (well, before the economy hit the skids, at least), how can you really know which ones are worth the time And yet - the knowledge nuggets and new perspective, when you do sit

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Perhaps your spending has spiraled out of control and your conversions haven't budged. Or, like many of us, maybe your performance is fine but your budgets have been slashed, forcing you to produce the same results with less spend. Before you scrap everything and start from scratch, pull out this trusty first-aid kit for PPC campaigns.

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Over the past two years "green" has become part of nearly every serious business discussion. But what will happen now in this damaged economy? Some of the green pressure on companies will lessen, but the underlying forces driving the green wave will continue over the coming years—from volatile commodity prices (which will rise again aggressively after the recession) to a rise in transparency to tougher questions from key stakeholders (such as your business customers, consumers, and employees). Those big picture trends will continue over years, but here now a few specific predictions for 2009.