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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Marketers responsible for lead generation are all too familiar with some common challenges—getting closed-loop feedback from the sales organization, measuring marketing effectiveness beyond just lead quantity and cost per lead, and building strong alignment with the sales organization. As presented in the MarketingProfs' research report, "B-to-B Lead Generation: Marketing ROI and Performance Evaluation Study," effective lead-generation marketing is very much tied to overcoming these challenges to prioritize lead quality over lead quantity.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Kodak has invested people, energy, and two years of dedicated effort into building its social media program, and has met with great success. Here, Amber Naslund talks to the people behind Kodak's efforts to find out why their social media program is so valuable to their business, and how they've defined success.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Good email design is a critical part of ensuring a high response rate. A major frustration within the industry is the lack of standards to guide designers when creating HTML email. Though there isn't one email-marketing design bible, there are fundamental design rules that should be applied. This article reviews some of the high-level design principles as well as more in-depth rules affecting some of the most common issues email marketers face.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

There's a new kid on the social media block that's starting to garner a lot of attention from companies. Microblogging sites, such as Twitter, are increasingly becoming a companion to an existing blog—or a standalone strategy for businesses that are using social media to connect with their customers. But many companies aren't sure what the microblogging "rules of the road" are. This is where Connie Reece comes in.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Rohit Bhargava is a well-respected marketer and blogger and frequent speaker at conferences, including the upcoming MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer. Here, he shares advice on how to get the most from the conference experience and discusses where social media is headed, as well as how businesses can make the most of it.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Although more than 80% of high-tech marketers say they have a lead-nurturing strategy, 64% say their strategy needs improvement, according to a February 2008 survey by TeleNet Marketing Solutions. As for which areas of overall lead-generation strategy tech marketers would like to improve in the next year, nurturing of long-term leads was the No. 1 response. Nurturing shortens the sales cycle and improves return on investment from lead-generation activities, so it is important to reconsider your nurturing strategy frequently. Consider the following three recommendations to enhance your strategy.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

The top 10 challenges facing the interactive marketing community are very much the same as those facing the entire marketing community... in that almost every marketing professional must address the interactive/online marketing medium. When they are asked about top challenges, many marketers say things like "social media" or "search engine optimization" or "integrating online and offline." But I think the challenges are much more fundamental to the individual and the organization. Here's my list of the top challenges, and my recommendations for dealing with them.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Many people think the power to restore our environment—to curb greenhouse gases, to clean up our air and water, to cut down on precious resources' ending up in landfills—lies in the hands of scientists and engineers, or lawyers and legislators. But the real power of green lies in the hands of marketers.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Within the grand taxonomy of consumer touchpoints, e-newsletters hold a sorry position. They're the longwinded busybodies who never get invited to the cool parties. Porcelain-skinned print campaigns turn up their perky, sans-serif noses at e-newsletters' frumpy templates and canned copy. Super Bowl spots kick sand in e-newsletters' bespectacled faces. Yet, these boxy embodiments of mediocrity move product and build loyalty. Marketing people are aware of this—they've proven it with charts and everything. You need an e-newsletter and you know it. So to that end, please review the following six bromides from a recent how-to article phoned in by a reigning email-marketing magnate... and then read why you should ignore them.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Everyone wants brand equity. But building it, when you are more likely to qualify for the Inc. 500 rather than the Fortune 500, can be a puzzle. Particularly when the role models for brand equity are global icons like Coca Cola, Volvo, or Sony—hardly your peer set. The good news is that the path to building brand equity is clear. Here are six simple steps you can take to get started.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Last week Google released Chrome, its new standards-compliant Web browser. But what does that mean to you? Though Google offers a great comic that explains the big changes, it is a bit jargon-heavy and, frankly, long at 32 (comic) pages. Here's an introduction of Chrome for the layman.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Clearly, Abraham Lincoln knew the difference between the almost-right word—and, the right word. A distinction famously defined by Mark Twain some 25 years later as "the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." With that thought in mind, here are a few choice words on word choice to help you get more of the right words into your communications. And, make your writing more effective.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

The vast red and blue oceans of the marketing world tsunamied into our awareness and vocabulary a few years ago, when two professors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, claimed that competition can be rendered irrelevant. Their book, Blue Ocean Strategy, heralded the news to marketing managers and CEOs all over the world: After years and years of surviving in red bloody oceans, swarming with murderous competitors, finally there's a better alternative! Let us consider an example of a company that supposedly followed the Blue Ocean strategy.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Is your company guilty of throwing dollars at campaigns to increase Web traffic, only to turn around and squander sales opportunities due to poor telephone and email handling? Make sure that your telephone system isn't preventing prospects from reaching out and touching someone at your company. As soon as you finish reading this article, pick up the phone and call your company's sales lines and test the process for yourself.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

There's probably no better case study on how a business leverages social media to connect with customers and grow itself than Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Library. Here, Gary shares the reasons your company should pay attention to social media, and what impact these tools will have in the years to come.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

With the rise of search engines, Wi-Fi, and a Do-It-Yourself mindset, today's consumers are more empowered than ever before. They not only believe that they're entitled to information but also have unprecedented access to information on a global scale. An increasing number of consumers turn first to the Internet when they want to make a purchase—even if the product will be bought offline. That's why any PR strategy focused solely on media gatekeepers is missing a large piece of the market. While there's still value in sending your message via traditional media, more and more prospective customers are doing their own research online, bypassing newspaper, magazines, radio, and TV completely. Here are five tips for creating successful direct-to-consumer PR.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Performance management has been applied to various parts of a business for quite a long time, particularly when it comes to manufacturing, logistics, and product development. Applying the concept to marketing is finally coming of age.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Businesses today are hunkering down. With consumers clutching their wallets more tightly, companies are scrutinizing every budget item in an effort to maintain profitability even as revenues are flat and costs rise. And with marketing commonly viewed as a discretionary spend, it is one of the likeliest victims of the ax.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

In the luxury brand business, stretching brands too thinly across market segments may gain short-term revenue increases, but it also almost guarantees long-term loss to the shareholders, brand owners, and, well, consumers. So, set your limits for how much you really want to stretch your brand before you open your doors to the public.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Email is not dying in the midst of the social-media revolution. In fact, the question we should be asking is: How can email marketers best leverage the new social-marketing applications?