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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Marketing Strategy

The corporate graveyard is full of onetime leading businesses that lost their competitive edge by failing to keep current on their competitors. Think of the classic story of Digital Equipment Corporation, with its once technical superiority turning into organizational chaos, or the various bloated airlines, with cost structures and business models that were vulnerable to competition long before 9/11. Here's a test of your own organization's competitive market strategy.

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Here's why tapping your top-volume clients for further growth doesn't always work. The truth is: you need to cast a wider net.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Not all site traffic is good. Like automobile traffic, sometimes traffic is just... congestion, and just gets in the way of those who you really want to come your way. How can marketers target the *right* sort of traffic?

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Even those familiar with SEO have common misconceptions about its value in B2B marketing. Frequently, I encounter prospects who understand that achieving a high ranking on a search engine is a valuable marketing tool that can make an impact on the bottom line of a business, but they mistakenly believe that is actually the case only if that business sells something online. Not so.

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Brand extensions represent a way to leverage a brand's assets and equity to market new products, increase sales and hopefully, profits. While there can be significant strengths to brand extension strategies, there can also be significant risks in diluting or severely damaging the brand. There is a great deal at stake, and companies should always proceed with caution.

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Writing an effective questionnaire is not a task for novices. At the very least it requires an understanding of four basic issues.

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Every marketer has by now heard the terms viral, buzz and word of mouth. Some will even have noted terms such as brand advocacy, advergames, blog marketing, influencer panels and consumer empowerment seeping into the industry's vocabulary. Collectively, the latest shift in thinking in the world of marketing has been termed "connected marketing." But what exactly is connected marketing and why are advertisers so interested in it? More importantly, how can marketers manage and measure it?

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The Web has changed the rules for press releases. The thing is, most old-line PR professionals just don't know it yet.

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Freestyle may describe a particular type of competition in this year's Winter Olympics, but it more aptly defines the attitudes, mindset and personalities of the games' most controversial and media-savvy athletes. Is their irreverence just a product of the Echo-Boom Generation, or is it something more? Could it possibly be smart marketing? Get the full story.

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Correct technique and good manners turn interactions with corporate gatekeepers from frustrating to fruitful. Here are six ways you can increase the odds that gatekeepers will grant you access.

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Have you learned the best way to identify and serve customers in your target segments? Segmentation could be the marketing tool that sets your company apart from the competition. Get the full story.

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The first step in getting closer to the customer is to go beyond his or her needs and understand the mechanics of their problem-solving behavior. Get the full story.

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As a relatively new player in the increasingly competitive comparison-shopping and online retail arena, pricefish.com needed a comprehensive and creative marketing campaign and strategy to re-launch the pricefish.com brand and generate consumer awareness for the site, among other things. Here's how they did it. Get the full story.

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Northern Virginia is plagued by shopping centers with the most horribly engineered parking lots—some lots capable of holding thousands of cars, but with as few as one entry/exit! What's worse: Just when you turn a corner and think you're on your way to escape, you dead-end at a random curb. What's equally amazing is how much such parking lots are like customer experience on a larger scale.

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Getting customers to love you starts with showing them the respect they deserve by making it painless (and eventually a joy) to do business with you.

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Much has been written about how business-to-consumer firms show their "love" to customers and win loyalty in return. But how about business-to-business customers? How do savvy firms love these buyers and win their loyalty?

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It may be awkward to openly acknowledge it, but every sale is a kind of seduction. As marketers, we make introductions, pursue courtships and hope for consummation—the sale. Here are a few thoughts on how to use words—which may be applied to everything from direct mail to Web site content—to make a more compelling appeal to the heart (and via the heart, to the purse).

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You've heard of many word-of-mouth marketing campaigns that help companies or people get more contacts or sales than they can handle. But how do you generate this kind of buzz?

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As a marketer, you are quite aware of the connection between branding and emotion. Countless books and articles have been written about it in the past few years. It's clear that people make decisions in life based on emotion. And decisions about the brands with which we choose to associate are incredibly emotional.

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Does your CEO love marketing? Does he or she recognize that marketing is the engine of the enterprise? And does he or she empower marketing to improve performance? Just as you strive to understand the needs of the customers who buy your company's products or services, you must understand your CEO's needs and priorities. Here's how.