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Sandra Zoratti, vice-president of worldwide marketing of the soon-to-be-formed InfoPrint Solutions Company, a Ricoh/IBM joint venture, added interactive marketing to the InfoPrint Solutions Company marketing mix to multiply the reach of the sales force in pursuit of the coveted small and medium-sized business market. Here is an overview of Sandra's innovative marketing communications approach.

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If you're like most marketers, you're probably struggling with the best ways to help your salespeople have more meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. Here are five quick tips for creating scripted conversations to help salespeople more effectively communicate your company's business value to customers and prospects.

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If your business targets a local region, the trick is connecting with those in your own back yard. It's wonderful to rank well in search engines for a competitive search phrase, but if your product is only available to a small subset, how much time and bandwidth can you afford to waste dealing with visitors from too far afield? By taking the right steps early you can get better search rankings from your SEO campaign and, more importantly, attract an audience from the right locale.

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Selling is not so much about the features of our products or services—or even the benefits the customer receives. Rather, it is about our relationship with the customer. People do business with people they trust.

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With spring comes not only a new season but a "sticky" new segment. Book Club is back for "Round Three" with the hottest book of the year, "Made To Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath. "Made To Stick" analyzes why some ideas survive while many others die. But that's not all; the authors have deconstructed why ideas that didn't have revenue incentives, like urban legends and fables, have amplified across social groups and through many generations. Here, they discuss this plus more of the book's concepts.

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Lead nurturing has become an integral component of an overall marketing strategy. While there is an ever-growing incentive to implement an effective lead nurturing strategy with business partners and prospects, determining which specific tactics to utilize can prove challenging.

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There is no reason why every company can't deliver an exciting image to its audience; one that generates the kind of buzz and excitement usually associated with companies like Apple, Victoria's Secret, Benetton, Absolut Vodka, and Sony. It may seem impossible to produce a whole lot of steam for things like sand paper, accounting services, and facial tissue. But even the most mundane offerings can get hearts racing and the blogosphere blogging.

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Executives in every industry are demanding definitive results linking marketing spend to business impact, and tradeshows are no exception. Exhibit managers need solid data when selecting the right tradeshows for their companies.

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For many marketing vehicles, it is difficult to directly estimate ROI -- the proportion of revenues in the financial year due to marketing. Not so with direct mail, however. Here's how.

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The complaints against advertising are seemingly endless, limited only by the creativity of its critics. But advertising is fundamentally benevolent, the author says. Advertising is a communication technique that attempts to influence the behavior of others—no more nor less so than the techniques used by parents, journalists, teachers, and politicians.

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Should your organization get into mobile marketing? The evidence shows that mobile marketing skews toward the business-to-consumer segment, and (slowly but surely) it is starting to gain momentum. Read on to find out whether the vehicle might be right for you.

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Target as a retail operation has the perfect name. The retailer defined its target and hit the bullseye.

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CEO "dashboards" can be a great way to shed light on customers and sales process performance and get feedback on how you as the CEO are performing your role. CEOs who want to know sooner what will be coming down the pike later will design a dashboard to track the following.

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Many businesses and individuals have leaped blindly into the blog pool. Countless bloggers have found the water a bit too chilly and have abandoned blogging altogether. Still others are barely keeping their heads above water as they grapple with the challenges of blogging. Perhaps you are contemplating blogging? Leading bloggers have some important warnings for you.

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When you think about it, nearly every big business began as a small business. Nike's first sale came from the trunk of a car, and Starbucks began its life as a mom-and-pop coffee shop. But a bigger business doesn't always equate to a better business. At some point, big becomes bad. Big becomes a matter of being convenient rather than being unique (McDonald's). Big becomes a game of market share, not customer care (Wal-Mart). It seems that by the time a small business gets big, it's time for it to act small again. Paradoxical? Yes. Impractical? No.

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Reflecting on past green products that were moving toward mainstream but failed, illustrates some of the challenges of legitimacy that innovation can face. On the other hand, monitoring those who have been notoriously self-serving and successful reveals marketing efforts to exemplify emotion, evade rationalization and drive profits.

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Many CEOs say that the way marketing happens in their organizations is ineffective. What's more, many CEOs believe that within the management teams and employees at companies they have worked in, marketers are focused on the wrong things. So what really matters to CEOs?

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We all know the basics of the consistent value proposition: When involved in providing a service or selling a product, every aspect of the customer experience must be consistent within the mindset of the prospect—from pricing to packaging, from customer support and billing to email and even company letterhead. If all these variables of the business equation remain consistent, you will be on the road to satisfying the psychological need of consistency. So what exactly does the consistent value proposition have to do with ethical search engine optimization?

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Issues like inbox deliverability or rendering are not the real problems that confound email marketers. Here's the real issue: Most companies are uninformed about email-marketing best practices and lack in-house expert resources. But because even poorly done email tends to perform fairly well, companies don't realize how much money they may actually be leaving on the table. How can you leave much less on that table?

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That nerve-wracking question can come near the beginning of an official job interview or sneak up before the meeting is about to close. But poised executives are always ready to answer what is likely the most important question that surfaces in a serious dialogue between decision-makers and prospective employees. These seven tips help you become that poised executive.