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The author recently had lunch with a good friend, a restaurateur. The food was delicious, but the lessons shared were even better. It seems the fragile nature of the restaurant business has more than a few things in common with the fragile nature of doing business on the Web.

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Will nearly 100 percent of my marketing email end up in my customers' spam folders? The answer may be "yes" if your company doesn't change its email practices.

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What's of greater value: the idea itself, the selling of the idea, or the production of the idea? While there seems to be a shift afoot, why does our industry continue to struggle to ascribe value to (and get paid for!) the core concepts that fuel everything else?

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When we are given the opportunity to stand out from our competitors, we must be memorable! What will standout so that people who are there will tweet positively about your company, your presentation, your product? What will they remember? What will they say about you?

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The news about investment in marketing is not good as many firms cut their marketing budgets left and right. Instead of taking an ax to your marketing budget, consider first how your budget is allocated and move some resources to marketing activities that yield a higher ROI.

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Do you know what will ensure your web site's success in 2009? Here's the top 10 ideas for online marketing success this coming year... and beyond.

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In the holiday email season of 2008, retailers turned up the gas on their email campaigns, hoping to salvage what was predicted to be a flat or down consumer-spending season. Chad White's Retail Email Index shows retailers sent a record number of emails in early December. But, he also points out, this spurt followed a flattening of the index, perhaps caused when major retailers encountered deliverability problems. It's not clear whether this email burst caused or influenced those deliverability woes, but an increase in frequency typically often leads to more unsubscribes and a higher spam-complaint rate, which in turn reduces deliverability. That's one of the trade-offs you can expect when you raise frequency beyond your subscribers' tolerance level, and one of the reasons I always caution marketers to manage frequency expectations even before the subscriber relationship begins.

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Want to really impress your boss, your board, your employees, or your mom? Want to drive your customers to the competition? Then simply fall flat on your face in your attempt to get your business to stand for something in the marketplace in 2009. That will really make an impact—and fill you with warm fuzzy feelings of non-accomplishment. So, if you're ready to fail, buckle your seatbelt and engage the air bag, because we're getting ready to crash and burn.

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Would your prospects be more likely to buy if they knew how others have benefited from your services? If so, maybe it's time to tell them. Better yet, let your current clients do the talking. But make it easy for them to share their experiences with a wide audience. Launch a customer case study program.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

What does "return on investment" really stand for? Roughly, it means the value we expect to get out of the effort we put into something—the output (return) resulting from an input (investment). But here's the trick: ignoring the input, or doing nothing in social media, will guarantee no return at all. So what is the "Return on Ignoring" social media? Here are some perspectives from the front lines.

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Gems of 2008: Online reputation management means tracking your brand and reacting when necessary. Brand monitoring can save you from a potential disaster when someone cites your name in an article that misrepresents you. What's more, it can help you proactively join conversations around your topic area, helping to get your brand name out there.

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Gems of 2008: You need an e-newsletter and you know it. But before rolling up your sleeves, please review the following six bromides from a recent how-to article phoned in by a reigning email-marketing magnate. After each, I'll explain how to do the exact opposite so that you can avoid polluting the e-cosystem with mediocre e-newsletters.

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Gems of 2008: 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.

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Gems of 2008: People have not stopped buying things, so how are they researching and purchasing products since they have made themselves immune to old marketing techniques like banner ads and direct mail? The answer is with search engines and Google. According to comScore, Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches in June 2008, and Google was used for 61.5% of those searches. This means it is essential that you make it easy for customers to find you, and one of the most effective ways to do so is search engine optimization (SEO), which focuses on getting your Web site listed in the unpaid, organic search engine results.

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by William Leake

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In a genre of disaster movies, there's a dramatic moment when an asteroid is plummeting toward Earth. Amidst a flurry of intense heroics, the asteroid is redirected... and tragedy is averted. But shouldn't the scientists be working sooner to change the asteroid's path? Which brings us to the relationship between advertising and shopper marketing... and a checklist of five things to consider to change the asteroid's path.

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In search, you have a very short window of opportunity for engaging your prospect. The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in SEO is to use techniques that ensure you are giving a prospect exactly what he or she is looking for. Otherwise, your prospect will simply click the back button and visit one of your competitors—a process that takes mere seconds.

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Is your company packaging experiences? Are they sought—or are they sold? And, drilling the concept down one more level: have you ever looked at yourself and considered the package that you offer and the experience you provide? In the current downturn, where layoffs loom large, those with the better shot at developing business or finding a job understand that the complete package and the experience contribute to a brand identity that stands out in a crowded marketplace.

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Recent buzz about personas has created some confusion. If you've tried to develop and deploy personas, you may have experienced resistance from other departments because they don't grasp the value that personas purportedly provide. The reason may be that personas (in the form of customer profiles) by themselves don't offer all that much. But personas are not just customer profiles; rather, "personas" is the title for a complex tool that has four components.

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This focus on "The What" is exacerbated by some search engine optimization techniques intended to drive traffic rather than to brand product, sell services, or convert traffic into customers. Traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers will tell you that their job is to deliver traffic, not orders—closing the deal is your job, and anybody who tells you that closing can be done by means of some automatic never-touched-by-human-hands method is just plain nuts.