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This week, post your answer to the query: How successful are webinars as a marketing approach? What works and what doesn't work? Also this week, read your answers to last week's dilemma: blog, forum or Wiki? Which format best meets the needs of a small community?

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When you are drowning in numbers from your quantitative efforts, talk to women to gain clarity. Remember: women make or influence over 80% of all consumer purchases. So, they are basically your boss. (You listen to your boss, right?) There are eight traps to beware of during qualitative research. If you hear yourself saying any of the following, you should stop for an immediate reality check.

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Hispanics have recently become the largest minority in the US, and a lot of marketers are trying to tap into this growing market. While many businesses now publish their information in Spanish and advertise in Hispanic print media and TV, relatively few are considering the Internet as a medium for reaching Hispanic consumers. The truth is that the Hispanic community is going online in large numbers, and it's happening right now.

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This week: Past success don't guarantee future success for products. So what do you do when a marketing effort flops? Join the conversation! Also this week, read your advice on: What works (and what doesn't) when an organization wants to invent a brand?

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To have a successful career in marketing, performing well is no longer enough. You need a solid reputation that extends beyond the walls of your company--and you have to be proactive in building it. One of the best ways to reinforce your reputation is through your online identity. In fact, you should be actively building (and managing) your online presence.

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From press releases to event announcements and customer memos, syndicating content with RSS offers a way around spam filters and ensures that interested parties receive your company info. Still, PR and marketing professionals are slow to adopt RSS. Many of you may believe it's too difficult or too technical. Perhaps the information you've read about RSS has scared you away. RSS can be an easy, viable way to publish corporate information. Here are five key reasons for adopting RSS as part of your communications strategy.

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It's always been conventional wisdom that the fastest and most efficient way to research products and pricing is on the Web. But is search engine marketing cost-effective enough to increase profits for B2B marketers? You bet, and here's why.

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Search optimization is about getting links. The more links you get to your Web site, the more likely you are to get into the first page of search engine results. In other words, killer Web content gets killer Web links. Last week, we covered the basics. Here, we continue the conversation.

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Online communities have been around for years, but we now have more tools for building them. The options include Weblogs (blogs), wikis, forums (bulletin boards), email discussions and online chats. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Which one best suits your needs? Also this week, read your suggestions for the previous dilemma: How does a company determine which collateral format works best for particular activities, or to target specific decision makers?

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Marketing partnerships can be one of the cheapest, fastest and easiest ways to grow your business and test new market opportunities. It can also be a black hole for resources. During the Internet heyday, it was enough to identify a potential partner and a cool idea, sign a contract and "see what happened." But we've begun to realize that although a partnership has no up-front costs, it still can be expensive in terms of time, resources and mindshare. To maximize success, keep the following rules in mind.

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Your credit card company invites you to attend a meet-and-greet with your favorite rock band before the upcoming concert. Your financial institution offers you a private golf lesson from one of the professional golfers in a PGA tournament. Your airline offers you the chance to attend spring training for your favorite MLB team. Sound impossible? Not at all. Welcome to the new world of sponsorships.

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Services marketing efforts are moving online not because a few marketing consultants and strategists say they are—but because your clients and prospects are online, and their online experiences are influencing all buying decisions. Here are four arguments you can use to help your firm boldly enter the new world of online marketing.

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If infrastructure-focused IT departments want to stop seeing themselves cut out of the conversations with their own companies' marketing departments, they've got to start speaking the language of business. Until IT departments are willing to make changes, their power will continue the steady decline that began with the recovery from the economic downturn. And marketing departments will continue to look externally for support.

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Today's customers perceive themselves as having unique needs and interests, and they demand that businesses understand and meet those individual needs. To satisfy these customers, major marketers must shift from casting a wide marketing net over a vast crowd to selling to millions of individual customers.

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Search optimization is about getting links. The more links you get to your Web site, the more likely you are to get into the first page of search engine results. In other words: Killer Web content gets killer Web links. Here are some guidelines to follow.

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Correctly executed, the written word can be a powerful means of establishing your business in the hearts and minds of your potential customers. Many of us are inhibited, however, by popularly held—yet largely mistaken—ideas of what good business-to-business copywriting should be. Here are five of the most common and destructive myths that may be undermining the impact of your copy.

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Clients come to you every single day asking you to give them a choice. A choice between yes and yes. Instead, all you're giving them is a choice between yes and no. Your bank account would see far better days if only you'd step back and use the immense power of the choice between yes and yes. Here we explain the psychological factor of choice: how it can work for you and how it can also turn against you.

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This week, add your two pesos to the SWOT Team dilemma: When inventing brands, what works and what doesn't? Also this week, read your answers to last week's query: What approaches work best for holiday campaigns?

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No matter how much we advocate the science of marketing, its art has not disappeared. Take the balanced scorecard, for instance. In the tradition of marketing creativity, a graphical document—the balanced scorecard—translates marketing strategy to operational terms and sows the seeds for marketing accountability as measured and highlighted on the marketing dashboard.

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Any salesperson worth his or her commission check will tell you that landing worthwhile new business takes a repeated and concerted effort—and lots of contact with the decision maker. This is all the more true with salesmanship in print (or across the airwaves, phone lines and other forms of modern communication).