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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

As tech marketing experts, we have a responsibility to communicate what our product is and what it does—early, and often. If within our array of marketing material we can successfully explain what our product is, how it benefits the customer and answer questions regarding its features, we will differentiate ourselves from the competition and ultimately gain more sales. Here's a first step: avoid the nondescriptive "solution."

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In most of the US, the winter weather outside is frightful, but that's no reason for cold calls to feel the same way. Small business personnel typically do multiple jobs, and sometimes they get stuck doing something that's not comfortable, like cold calling. To address that marketing challenge, readers offer strategies for warming up those cold calls.

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A breakaway brand is a great brand that is built to be a winner over the long term. Time after time, a breakaway brand leads its category, generates high awareness and grows market share, despite intense competition. Nike, Apple's iPod, and JetBlue exemplify breakaway brands. While the approach may vary from one marketer to another, the process is essentially the same. Ultimately, the goal is to reach the brand truth.

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A good guarantee should not only appeal to the base emotion of a potential purchaser but also afford some real protection that the purchase he or she is making will provide meaningful results. Unfortunately, many of the most popular types of guaranteed SEO do not. Here's what really matters.

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A commitment to pleasing customers should be much more than a marketing claim (or an interface that can be capriciously switched off) but a core principle that guides every decision. All that should ever matter is what really matters to customers.

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When your company is well synchronized with market needs, prospects buy and money flows. Unfortunately, few companies can maintain a constant flow. Salespeople churn out demonstrations, samples and proposals. Marketing departments churn out newsletters, ad copy and brochures. But not enough prospects close. What makes the sales funnel flow faster?

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Value chains are replacing brands are the most powerful weapon in the marketing arsenal. While still widely perceived as source of risk, value-chain transparency actually offers brand owners an opportunity to create new forms of value for customers at an emotional and ethical level—the level where brands have traditionally operated. In contrast to brands, the equity currently locked within value chains is real, testable and valuable to end-users. Learning to release this value is the key to sustainable competitive advantage.

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Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, the world's largest free online encyclopedia. In its development, Wales created a community of volunteers who have published over 800,000 articles. Here, Wales offers some insights to his business and its philosophy, and he talks about what's next in the wiki world.

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Gaining access and connecting to executive decision makers is a challenge of most sales professionals. Here are seven common challenges that sales professionals need to resolve in order to effectively engage the executive suite.

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Just as understanding the requirements of your market is important in selling a product or service, understanding the needs of the relevant media is critical in a successful public relations effort.

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Why are companies constantly changing their advertising message? Why do 95% of all new product introductions fail? Why is so much money wasted on poorly conceived marketing programs when research could illuminate the way? What prevents so many marketing people from using research effectively is one of three things.

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When it comes to promoting technological devices, it helps to focus on the product's benefits. But, sometimes, promoting a complex menu of benefits isn't easy. Here's how to approach the issue so that prospects can quickly understand how benefits come into play.

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Mention the words "consumer empowerment" to marketers, and most will shrink away from you like a vampire from light. Conjuring up all sorts of evils, consumer empowerment is considered a stake in the heart of marketing. PVRs, pop-up blockers and on-demand media empower people to avoid advertising and make a mockery of advertising scheduling. Consumer blogs, forums and review sites give consumers a global voice that can determine the fate of a brand. The myriad product and service choices available empowers consumers to switch products on the most fleeting of whims. So consumer empowerment means bad news for marketing, right? Surprisingly, no.

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Women age 50+ constitute a market force to be reckoned with. These women are in their prime—this is the healthiest, wealthiest, most influential generation of women in history, and terms like mature (overripe), middle-aged (frumpy) and senior (out to pasture) fail to convey their vitality and potential. These women should be the primary marketing target for a host of industries, including travel, autos, real estate, finance services, technology and home improvement. Yet they are all too often ignored by marketers, who retain an outdated obsession with youth. This group has money and the time to spend it, and those who recognize its potential will prosper.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

As the evidence shows, a white paper can be a powerful and persuasive marketing vehicle. Provided, of course, that the reader actually reads it. Here's how.

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While a marketing webinar is the most common use of one-to-many Web collaboration services, it is by no means the only way of leveraging Web events. Webinars, which offer a lower cost-structure than live seminars, can be used in diverse ways to cut marketing, sales, and product development costs and drive top-line growth. A great Web collaboration and webinar strategy can even create competitive or strategic advantage.

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RSS is getting much media coverage. But very little is being said about the full circle of RSS marketing power. The truth is that RSS goes far beyond "simple" blogging or news delivery. RSS can be fully integrated in most marketing activities, having the power to extend them and increase their results.

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Marketers always have to adapt to changing consumer demands, consumer tastes, shifting customer priorities, economic downturns, economic upturns, savvy consumers and buyers just looking for something new. But before marketing can affect a change with either a new product offering, or reinvigorate a new brand, there's one constant that remains. In marketing it's the "Four Ps."

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Despite being little known in the North America and Europe, Chance Discovery has groundbreaking implications for Western marketing analytics. It endeavors to solve a longstanding paradox of standard quantitative marketing analysis: how to find new opportunities in our data that have yet to be realized. In other words, Chance Discovery moves our analysis of marketing data from standard description or modeling into a formal approach for seeking inspiration from within these data.

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Very often, the people who first recognize the potential benefits of professional SEO are not the key decision makers. They are the people on the front lines of the organization—the ones who deal with prospects and customers every day. But proposing professional SEO as a new marketing initiative to the people higher in the chain of command can be a frustrating process—very often leading to disenchantment and a general sense that the marketing decision maker doesn't "get it." The real problem, however, may lie in a flawed approach.