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Guerrilla Marketing is often defined as an unconventional way of performing promotional activities on a very low budget. While this is accurate, it's not quite right. The great guerrillas like Che or Mao had something more going for them than being "unconventional and cheap." Their battles became legend because they were thinking beyond the next quarter.

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If you want to learn how to develop new revenue generating customer relationships, check out the strategic Nike+ iPod alliance. Would a similar model work for you?

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One way to delight users is with the guy-in-the-unexpected-context phenomenon. Any company with way-over-the-top customer service is giving its users an unexpected, delightful surprise. Something to remember. Something to talk about. But even the subtle out-of-context surprise can trigger some neurons and brain chemistry. A reference to one movie slipped into the dialogue of... another movie. An Easter egg hidden in a... logo (like FedEx). A bud vase in a... car. It's not about the thing—it's about the context in which that thing is expressed. Some examples, big and small....

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Increasingly there's a new priority emerging for marketers, and that is sales acceleration: Finding disciplined and repeatable ways to move existing customers as well as prospects from "why?" to "buy"—more rapidly. Here are tips on how marketers can prove their value and work together with sales to accelerate the sales cycle.

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Customers have more power than ever, requiring marketing to change how it works to better meet customer demands.

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Do you remember that Dilbert panel where Dilbert follows a building map to find the marketing department? Upon arrival, he finds Grecian columns, a party that would make Bacchus proud, and a sign that says, "Welcome to Marketing. Two drink minimum." For me, having been on both sides of those Grecian columns, this cartoon sums up a gap between marketing and technology.

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"Marketing to women" has become the new buzz phrase for many companies. Corporations are creating high-level positions with the title of director or VP of the Women's Marketing Initiative; forming Women's Advisory Boards; hiring consultants to help them; and employing and promoting more women. While these moves may be seen by some as politically correct, there should be a sound business basis for recognizing this influential market segment and trying to capture its loyalty and dollars. How would capturing just 1% more market share impact your bottom line? 3%? 5%? 50%?

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Marketers have a choice: You can continue using the same marketing methods you have always used to reach your customers, or you can try something revolutionary. You can join them. You can stop trying to guess what your customers are talking about, and instead join their communities and talk to them directly. Here are some of the tools -- like blogs, MySpace, and other consumer-generated media -- that your customers are already using to communicate online, and how you can incorporate them into your marketing plan.

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One of the enduring myths of negotiation is that it is a back-and-forth struggle with your customer that occurs in the final stage of the sale, the "close." Here's how to survive (and maybe avoid) it.

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Google recently launched Google Trends, a tool that allows you to view keyword search trends by year and month. You can also view trends by news mentions and by region/country of searchers performing searches. Here are some real-world ways marketers can use the data in this truly useful tool to help get a jump on competitors and assess their search penetration.

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The month-long 2006 World Cup Soccer tournament will begin on June 9, and already commercials have been launched referencing the event. The heavy hitters behind those ads include 15 global brands, such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Nike, and Adidas. The US focuses on advertising globally since the World Cup typically evokes little excitement domestically. Only one market segment in the United States veers drastically from that trend—the Hispanic community.

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At a recent marketing association event about landing big company clients, one of the participants asked the speaker, "How do we find the watering holes where the decision makers meet?" The room burst into discussion. Some people said golf courses. Some said nonprofit boards. But I couldn't help thinking of a better alternative: Build your own watering hole. Load your Web site with so much fresh, valuable, and compelling information that it becomes the center of your industry's discussions. Here's how.