Retail Marketing in a Down Economy—Sans Discounts
Surviving a Recession without rushing to the bottom with Brand-killing discounts

There is a lot of concern in the retail markets regarding this year’s holiday shopping volume. In response, retailers are offering deep discounts to reel in shoppers. Now the question becomes, can retailers survive this economic downturn without resorting to deep discounts?

[ Get the full story on retail marketing—without discounts ]

Publicity and the Toxic Shower Curtain
Need some press? Use provocative words.

Public Relations people want to focus their time on things that pass the 'who cares?' and 'so what?' tests. Anytime you have the word 'toxic' next to an item everyone has in their homes, you can be fairly sure it will get picked up in the news and it will spread throughout the Web like wildfire.

[ Get the story of the Toxic Shower Curtain ]

"Me Too" Marketing
Don't worry. Even the big guys make this marketing positioning mistake.

Positioning your business as simply an alternative to your competition with little or no differentiation is often referred to as "Me Too" marketing.

Lots of us make this mistake and if you feel like you’re the only one, look at Microsoft and Apple.  Even the mighty Microsoft is "me too"-ing Apples computer personification campaign with their own "I'm a PC" ads.

[ Everybody's Doing it! ]

Online Reviews
Not just for B2C anymore...

Long understood in B2C marketing, reviews are sometimes your best friend and other times your worst enemy. Today, online reviews are becoming more and more popular for B2B businesses--and so they should. 

[ Read More ]

The Audience Frame of Mind
Developing a Message that speaks to your audience and their frame of mind

The key to successful marketing messaging is not to just understand how to communicate to your target audience, but also to understand what frame of mind your audience is in. 

[ Read More ]

Look for the Capo D'Astro Bar
The key to successful product or service differentiation

Differentiation is a process of discovering what your business and its products can say that no one else can.  Ease of use or customer service, for example, is what everyone says.  The key to differentiation is to look for the Capo d’astro Bar.

The story of the Capo d’astro Bar goes something like this: [ Read More ]

Under Dog Marketing in a Down Economy
An Opportunity to Out Market Your Competition

In an economic slowdown (dare we say the “R”-word) businesses usually look to the far future and in the meantime, hunker down and weather the storm. They fire all but a few of their accounts, eliminate in-house IT support, and especially look at marketing as a financial open wound.

HOWEVER, there is a real opportunity in this economy. [ Read More ]

The Hybrid Website
Developing a Corporate Website That's More Than an Online Brochure.

Organizations around the world spend untold sums of money driving traffic to their corporate websites but few stop to think about what to do with that all that hard-earned traffic. Why don't websites directly support sales activities?

It has something to do with the troubled marriage of design, technology and hybrid cars. [ Read More ]

Backwards Marketing Budgeting
Determining and Optimizing Your Marketing Budget Starts at the End.

When putting together your marketing budget, starting with a percentage of revenue, concocting complicated SLAs or distributing detailed RFPs are all inefficient ways of determining your marketing budget and finding the perfect marketing firm for the job.

The trick is to work backward. [ Read More ]

Generating and Measuring a Return on Marketing Investment
A Metrics-based Marketing Approach

Most people have a hard time looking at marketing as anything but a dreaded cost of doing business. There's a move afoot, however, to change the way we look at marketing from a cost, to an investment.

It’s a little difficult to make that leap in logic, but let us lay it out for you. [ Read More ]

"Customer Service" Marketing
Developing a Customer-Focused Culture and Promoting It

"Customer service" is one of those things that's as over-used as it is rarely delivered upon. Great customer service is a must for any business to continue to grow without constantly turning-over its customer base, but what is customer service? More to the point, what is good customer service and how can you build a business on it? [ Read More ]

The Unattainable Triangle
Composed of "Quality", "Price" and "Speed", How Do We Choose the Right Two?

All products or services have two out of the three sides of the triangle. That is to say, high-quality and fast turnaround but high-price or low-price, fast-turnaround but low-quality and so on. Choosing the right two sides to be on is critical in the positioning of your business.

Easy to say. Difficult to determine. [ Read More ]

No One Can Resist a Monkey
How Your Creativity More than Your Budget Will Win You Leads at the Trade Show.

Businesses exhibit at trade shows and other events with hopes of coming face-to-face with their ideal buyers and the gatekeepers to the most lucrative channels. The reality of it is, you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your competition and everybody ends up shouting their value to anyone who will listen. The problem is, if you do what everybody else is doing, you're lost in the noise of the show.

A successful event showing is all about standing out by thinking creatively rather than just increasing your event budget so you can shout a little louder. [ Read More ]

Online Newsletters are Marketing Workhorses
Websites get the glory, but online newsletters can do all the work.

It's been said that though the yachts get the glory, dinghies make the sailor. The same is true for HTML Newsletters. Websites get the glory. Newsletters make the developer.

With an online newsletter, you’re essentially building a mini, portable website. How can you develop an online newsletter that people want to ready and react to? This is were it can get tricky. [ Read More ]

Relevancy Reigns
In today's Search Engine Dominated World, It's Relevancy That Reigns.

In a time when search engine optimization is becoming a household phrase, little thought is given to the optimization portion. Optimization is an apt name for it. This is an ongoing process for making your website and indeed your marketing message in general, resonate with, and become relevant to, your target buyer.

Relevancy, itself, reigns as it is what separates the interesting from the useless. [ Read More ]