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Over a period of six years, an established high-tech company has seen five reincarnations of its global marketing organization. With each new senior marketing executive has come a new interpretation of the company's mission and vision, followed by new attempts to tune market positioning and overhaul sales tools. Such organizational instability sabotages the company's market messaging. The company expends inordinate amounts of time and money on repeatedly reinventing itself—while confusing its industry, customers and employees. Sound uncomfortably familiar?

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Most businesspeople intuitively know that the key to successful marketing is having a marketing plan—a blueprint for action. But many companies operate without one, focusing instead on the issues of the moment without committing to a long-term strategy. A marketing plan does not need to be complex, but it does require several elements to be effective.

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Marketing complex products and services is a challenge. This week, add your two cents to: What methods work well for marketing technical services and solutions? Also this week, read your answers to last week's dilemma: What do you do when you are stuck with a no-name moniker and no brand?

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It's the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. Let the finger-pointing begin! In truth, the key to accurate lead-conversion ROI calculations is "self-honesty." While every company has the right to create its own definition of "R" to compare with "I," it is critical to look back at the justification that was used to support lead-generation activities prior to funding.

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Endorsements can prove to be excellent ways to create a genial relationship between your product and the person or team being endorsed. Just be wary of capitalizing too quickly on a media event that may not be advantageous for the brand!

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For those who don't have a product to push, but do want to get across a way of thinking or the thought leadership that differentiates them, an effective approach is to position that expertise via bylined articles. But first, you have to understand the five Ws.

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At the heart of branding resides a paradox. This article unravels that paradox and examines its intricacies.

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Without metrics to track performance, marketing and business plans are ineffective. Businesses need to know which success factors require measuring, and they must understand the differences between measurements, metrics, and benchmarks. For marketers, three primary metrics constitute a starting point for tracking their performance.

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Unfortunately, life has no crystal ball. This week, weigh in with your advice on: What process or evaluation model do you rely on to ensure your decisions have a better chance for success? Also this week, how do you communicate with one voice to various markets?

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Most trademark licensing relationships are defined and evaluated based on the terms in a license agreement contract. In the case of a brand extension license, there can be a lot at stake, including the health and wellbeing of the licensor's brand. Surprisingly, many license agreements do not include specific terms or requirements that reflect key marketing objectives.

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The act of branding has 10 different meanings, which translate into 10 different ways to create instrumentality or usefulness beyond the tangible benefits of a product/service. Following those 10 approaches will make the difference between masterful creations of brands and amateur imitation.

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A brand means much more than its product and service features. Brands are built from nothing less than the sum of a customer's experiences with a product, service or company. Customers' total brand experience will determine whether they will buy anything more from the company and, just as importantly, whether they'll spread awesome or awful word-of-mouth to friends and family.

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As service and technology firms begin to awaken from a long, recession-inspired hibernation period, they are again beginning to think about proactive lead generation. If your firm is stepping-up outbound marketing, your first step should be to re-examine your firm's thinking about what works and what doesn't. Consider the following seven service lead-generation misconceptions.

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A name change could mean disaster. How does a company regain its brand without gaining a bad reputation for the constant changes it has undergone? Also this week, read your answers to last week's query: What's the best way to access other divisions of the same company?

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Times have changed for the account service department. Our role as account executives is to lend expertise and insight as we hack the path for our clients through a post 9-11 marketing jungle.

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When your brand is highly differentiated from your peers' or competitors', it is important to fortify that differentiation through all of your brand affiliations. Be aware that such affiliations are not co-branding—sharing a product or service with two brand names. Rather, it is connecting your brand to another brand to bolster your differentiation, expand your brand attributes or increase your visibility.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Last April, Google.com was excoriated in the press for introducing an email service in which users knowingly consent to having incoming emails scanned by machine to permit the display of targeted ads. But at the same time, another court decision, which received far less attention than Gmail, lets email providers scan their users' emails for almost any purpose, without permission. While it remains to be seen whether the logic of that decision will be widely adopted, there is little doubt that it marks a significant point in the jurisprudence of communications privacy.

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