Contributed by Hank Stroll
- Marketing Challenge: Is It Time to Move Into Mobile Marketing?
Should your organization get into mobile marketing? The evidence shows that mobile marketing skews toward the business-to-consumer segment, and (slowly ...
- Marketing Challenge: Two Ways to Engage Prospects Online
For over a year, there's been lots of talk about Web 2.0. Whether hyped or not, there's definitely some meat ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Fire up the Team
This week, how do you create a sense of urgency when comes to contacting prospects and following up with clients? ...
- Marketing Challenge: Do You Stalk Customers?
We've learned not to trust email to arrive safely in the recipient's inbox. So we leave voicemail asking whether the ...
- Marketing Challenge: Dread Regular Meetings?
Most of us dread unproductive business meetings. Here's several ways to improve their efficiency and usefulness.
- Marketing Challenge: Gross Sales vs. Gross Profit
This week: Do you compensate a sales team on gross sales or gross profit for services? See if you agree ...
- Marketing Challenge: Four Cures for Foot-in-Mouth Disease
What's the best way to rectify an embarrassing situation with a client? Read on for sound advice on how to ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Score With Search Engines
Small businesses don't often have the resources for the amount of effort needed to succeed with the likes of Google, ...
- Marketing Challenge: Working as a Team
Marketing team members, as well as services and sales employees, must work together like this season's football players to achieve ...
- Marketing Challenge: Turning Management Skills Into Experience
You can't judge a job by its title. Whatever your background, if you're trying to move into a new area you ...
- Marketing Challenge: Getting Product Salespeople to Sell Services
This week, how do you train product salespeople to sell services? Here are three steps.
- Marketing Challenge: Hire Experience or Potential?
This week: Should you hire experienced marketing professionals, or those with less experience but more potential?
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Save a Product
This week: When you aren't ready to send a product out to pasture, how do you reinvigorate it? How can ...
- Marketing Challenge: Two Ways to Stop Web-Design Meddlers
This week, readers offer ways to sift through executive-level advice and keep potential Web design meddlers in check.
- Marketing Challenge: Two Ways to Market on a Small Budget
What's the best way to get big results from a small budget?
- Marketing Challenge: How to Merge an Online and Offline Business
How does an organization doing business both offline and online overcome the perception that it's only an Internet company?
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Score With Downloadable Products
This week: Many businesses have succeeded in selling products online in the form of e-books, e-reports and other downloadable content. ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Catch Clients
Referrals are one of the most effective ways to gain business. But what's the best vehicle....in-person conversations, email newsletters, blogs, ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Engage Employees and Customers
Web 2.0 reflects how the Web is changing from watching to "involving." What are the best ways to engage with ...
- Marketing Challenge: When Branding Equals Loyalty
This week: When done right, desktop-based applications are beneficial tools that give marketers a way to keep customers engaged with ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Magical Marketing Metrics
Thanks to technology, you've got a big file of data available for your review and analysis. But what to do ...
- Marketing Challenge: Two Tradeshow Alternatives
For some organizations, there's no business like tradeshow business. But diversifying your marketing efforts leads to better results. So what ...
- Marketing Challenge: When Customers Control the Message
Customers have more power than ever, requiring marketing to change how it works to better meet customer demands.
- Marketing Challenge: Intercepting the Sales vs. Marketing Rift
Why can't sales and marketing see eye to eye, and how does an organization deal with oftentimes opposing views?
- Marketing Challenge: Traditional vs. New Marketing
What's the difference between so-called new marketing and traditional marketing methods? How can a marketer adapt?
- Marketing Challenge: Playing the Name Game
Companies sometimes have two names: the company name and the brand name. This week: How do you find a dream ...
- Marketing Challenge: Where Are the Experienced Freelance Marketers?
We hear of freelance writers, freelance editors and freelance designers, but rarely do we hear of freelance "marketers." But that ...
- Marketing Challenge: What RSS Can Do for Marketing
Do your customers prefer to get information from email newsletters? Web sites? Blogs? Feeds? A mix? A growing number of ...
- Marketing Challenge: When Not All Traffic Is Good
Not all site traffic is good. Like automobile traffic, sometimes traffic is just... congestion, and just gets in the way ...
- Marketing Challenge: Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About
You've heard of many word-of-mouth marketing campaigns that help companies or people get more contacts or sales than they can ...
- Marketing Challenge: How to Sell Services
How would you sell computer repair services? Fast, friendly, and reliable? That kind of language speaks to the company's opinion ...
- Marketing Challenge: When It's Best NOT to Blog
Blogging is ubiquitous. Marketing experts, the media and the influx of books on business blogging give the impression that we ...
- Marketing Challenge: When It's Best NOT to Blog
Blogging is ubiquitous. Marketing experts, the media and the influx of books on business blogging give the impression that we ...
- Marketing Challenge: Email Ethics
At a networking event, you exchange business cards with another person. The business card includes an email address. No doubt, ...
- Marketing Challenge: Warming Up Cold Calls
In most of the US, the winter weather outside is frightful, but that's no reason for cold calls to feel ...
- Marketing Challenge: Promoting Technology in Plain English
When it comes to promoting technological devices, it helps to focus on the product's benefits. But, sometimes, promoting a complex ...
- Marketing Challenge: Turning Browsers Into Buyers
Turning online lookers into buyers takes work. You have to ensure the site is intuitive, in that visitors can find ...
- Marketing Challenge: Ducking Presentations That Bore
You're sitting on a hard chair, constantly shifting position, trying to get comfortable. The speaker doesn't keep your mind off ...
- Marketing Challenge: How to Promote Entertainment
You might have the greatest show on Earth, but if no one knows about it, nobody will see it. For ...
- Marketing Challenge: How to Give Thanks to Clients
It's the time of year when many businesses start thinking about sending their clients appropriate gifts to thank them for ...
- Marketing Challenge: Setting Your Marketing Budget
This week: How does a business determine how much to devote to its marketing budget? Unfortunately, there's no magic number ...
- Marketing Challenge: Getting Customers to Act on Direct Response
Direct mail remains a successful way to reach customers. The trick, of course, is getting customers to act on the ...
- Marketing Challenge: Bundling Services
This week: It's rare to find a fast-food restaurant that doesn't offer a combo that's a better deal than each ...
- Marketing Challenge: The Timing of Release Dates
Whether you are talking Harry Potter books or more complex products, the timing of release dates can be critical to ...
- Marketing Challenge: Educating Clients About the Sales Process
Read your ideas to solve this week's marketing challenge: What's the best way to educate clients about the sales ...
- Marketing Challenge: 3 Steps to Becoming an Industry Guru
Creating demand for your speaking services can be challenging. This week, read the three more important steps for creating interest ...
- Marketing Challenge: 7 Ways to Super Content
This week, read your answers to the previous challenge: What are the top secrets to creating great online content? Also ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Sure Ways to Reach Teens
This week, read your answers to a previous dilemma: What are the most effective ways to launch a Web site ...
- Marketing Challenge: Four Low-Cost Ways to Create a Household Name
This week, our regularly featured "SWOT Team" column gets a new name as it becomes the weekly "Marketing Challenge" ...
- SWOT Team: Marketing Is a Girl's Best Friend
This week, add your two cents to the following: Which marketing efforts and methods works best when marketing dollars are ...
- SWOT Team: Bulk Shopping Online
This week, add your thoughts to the following dilemma: If you work in a business that sells in bulk, how ...
- SWOT Team: Take Your Marketing Global
This week, add your own two cents to the following dilemma: How do you go about promoting a product on ...
- SWOT Team: Webinar Pros and Woes
This week, post your answer to the query: How successful are webinars as a marketing approach? What works and what ...
- SWOT Team: When Marketing Campaigns Flop
This week: Past success don't guarantee future success for products. So what do you do when a marketing effort flops? ...
- SWOT Team: Building Community With Wikis and Weblogs and Other Forums
Online communities have been around for years, but we now have more tools for building them. The options include Weblogs ...
- SWOT Team: Inventing Brands
This week, add your two pesos to the SWOT Team dilemma: When inventing brands, what works and what doesn't? Also this ...
- SWOT Team: The Best Marketing Tools
This week, add your two cents to the following dilemma: What can a business do to determine which marketing tools ...
- SWOT Team: Holiday Campaigns Year-Round
This week, the SWOT Team asks: What holiday marketing programs have worked for you? Are some holidays better than others ...
- SWOT Team: Marketing Without Resources
This week, add your two cents to the question: How can a poor marketing employee promote a product with little ...
- SWOT Team: To Blog or Not to Blog?
This week, add your two cents to the discussion: What should companies consider when deciding whether to launch a blog? ...
- SWOT Team: Creating Effective Media Kits
This week, add your two pesos to the dilemma: What makes for an effective media kit? What works and what ...
- SWOT Team: Reaching the Decision Makers
This week, add your two pesos to the dilemma: How can we quickly reach decision-makers? Also this week, read your answers ...
- SWOT Team: Preventing Email Bounce-Back
This week, add your two pesos to the dilemma: What steps can you take to ensure your email newsletters get ...
- SWOT Team: What's the Least Painful Way to Measure ROI?
Marketing departments often have the challenge of dealing with too much data. This week: How do you collect the right ...
- SWOT Team: Calling All Readers!
This week, add your two cents to the dilemma: What should publishers do to build reader involvement? Also this week, read ...
- SWOT Team: Looking Under the Newsletter's Hood
This week: What approaches or steps do newsletter publishers need to follow to ensure the newsletter makes it all the ...
- SWOT Team: Why Is Long Copy Compelling?
Long copy works well in direct mail. But how does it work online? This week, add your own two cents ...
- SWOT Team: 'Tis the Season for B2B?
This week, add your two pesos to the dilemma: If you're a service business or sell a more complex product, ...
- SWOT Team: Complying With Anti-Spam Laws
Ethical marketers all over the world worry about US spam-related laws, because they are not always clearly written or easy ...
- SWOT Team: Marketing Complex Products
Marketing complex products and services is a challenge. This week, add your two cents to: What methods work well for ...
- SWOT Team: Making Winning Decisions
Unfortunately, life has no crystal ball. This week, weigh in with your advice on: What process or evaluation model do ...
- SWOT Team: When a Brand Is Merged
A name change could mean disaster. How does a company regain its brand without gaining a bad reputation for the ...
- SWOT Team: Reaching New Customers Within the Same Company
This week, the SWOT Team asks: Outside of direct referrals, how do you reach other potential customers within the same ...
- SWOT Team: Selling the Intangible
This week: What's the best way to market "invisible" products like services? Join the conversation! Also this week, read your advice ...
- SWOT Team: Boosting Survey Responses
This week, how can you entice more people to consider filling out your surveys? Join the conversation! Also this week: ...
- SWOT Team: The WOW Factor
When you need to make your company, product or service stand out from the rest, where do you turn for ...
- SWOT Team: Effective Customer Retention Programs
This week: What kinds of loyalty programs are most effective? Also this week: Tired of the same ol', same ol'? ...
- SWOT Team: Increasing Email Open Rates
This week, share your most effective ways for increasing email newsletter open rates. Also: where do you turn when ...
- SWOT Team: What To Do When the Well Is Dry
This week, add your two cents to: What methods can a company use to increase exposure, other than the same ...
- SWOT Team: Climbing the Wobbly Corporate Marketing Ladder
This week: How do you find the tools you need to be successful in a new marketing position? Also this ...
- SWOT Team: Marketing in the Major Leagues
This week: what kind of marketing and selling activities can a company launch to get into a well-established market? Also ...
- SWOT Team: Standing out From the Crowd
How does a writer develop a niche and stand out from the competition? Also this week, read your answers to ...
- SWOT Team: Extreme Makeovers Done Right
This week: What are the elements that work or don’t work for a business Web site? Also this week: How ...
- SWOT Team: Overcoming the Pricing Battle
his week: How can a small company overcome the pricing battle? Also this week: What are your definitions of these ...
- SWOT Team: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses (and Your Bored)
nly one in three of you are passionate about your jobs and companies. What advice do you have for helping ...
- SWOT Team: Talking Turkey About Marketing Definitions
hat's your definition of segment identification? What's a unique selling proposition? Add your own two cents to this week's discussion ...
- SWOT Team: Do PowerPoint Improvements Ever End?
This week, weigh in with your own suggestions to: How do we create a PowerPoint slide deck everyone will love? ...
- SWOT Team: Fighting for the Right to Train
This week: What's the best way to convince management of the value of training? Also, read your answers to: What's ...
- SWOT Team: Breaking Into the Marketing Biz
This week, add your own two cents to the current dilemma: How can recent grads or those looking to change ...
- SWOT Team: Save Your Media Coverage From Extinction
This week, add your own two cents to: What's the best way to avoid becoming a media dinosaur, long forgotten ...
- SWOT Team: Help! Our New Marketing Boss Steps on Everything
This week: How do you handle a new boss who gives orders and takes little or no input? Also this ...
- SWOT Team: Everyone’s a Marketing Critic
ow do you handle interruptions from others who believe (mistakenly!) they have a great marketing idea? Also this week: How ...
- SWOT Team: Toot Your Own Horn
his week, weigh in with your own two pesos to: What's the best way to secure needed publicity? Also this ...
- SWOT Team Searches for an Innovation Road Map
How can we bring our innovation to market? Is there a road map? Also, read your answers to: Do we ...
- SWOT Team: Are Academic Credentials Still Vital to Success?
This issue’s dilemma asks: Are academic credentials still vital to success? Also, read your answers to: "When we’re paying per ...
- The SWOT Team Wonders: What Do Women Want?
his issue’s dilemma asks: How important is it to tailor your marketing approach to women in business? Also this week: ...
- SWOT Team: From Clicks to Ka-Ching!
How can we increase our conversion rates on a pay-per-click search deal? Also this week: Should we continue renting from ...
