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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.

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Even with January behind us, a brand manager is still full of the promise of the New Year. Sure, things didn't go perfectly during 2005. But it's worth taking note of those things you'll solemnly swear you'll never do again.

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Online marketing and sales functions are often divided up between different people, groups or even offices. While each individual works hard to achieve a breakthrough increase in performance, the group as a whole often remains unaware of how much can be achieved over time through small micro-gains along the entire marketing and sales pathway. Remember what your investment adviser told you about the power of compounding? The exact same principle applies to marketing.

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With Google AdWords, it is now possible to target prospects at the very moment they are thinking about buying your products or services. Here's how to maximize your success with Google AdWords. With proper preparation and execution, starting Google AdWords can be like planting a money tree that will provide your business with a steady stream of revenue.

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Imagine if half the people that called your sales team hung up within 10 seconds. There are not prospects they were cold-calling either, but interested people calling them. Heads would roll. At the very least, you'd want to know why so many people were disengaging. Well, chances are it's happening to you right now, every day. Your sales team isn't the problem; the real problem is your most visible and active company representative—the Web site.

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Every company aims to maximize profit. Yet, in the frenzy of everyday work, it is not uncommon for "urgent" issues to supplant "important" ones, thereby shifting the focus of marketing professionals. The most important contribution that marketers make to the company's success is consciously choosing a strategy for optimizing sales and marketing resources—and then sticking to it.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Most of the direct mail sent uses one of two copywriting techniques. In the author's view, neither works. The truth is there are only four ways of writing a direct mail ad that will raise your response rate.

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Over 20% of the US population consists of functionally illiterate consumers, yet we know very little about their thinking and behavior. Why should marketers pay attention to a segment that may seem less than economically desirable? Understanding how functionally illiterate consumers think and behave has many implications for businesses, particularly retail chains and service providers with a large proportion of customers with low literacy levels. What's more, in economies where self-service, packaged products, and computer technology characterize most retail shops, functional illiteracy is a surprisingly significant issue shaping the bottom line.

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It's been called "selling the invisible"—delivering intangible services as a core "product" offering. But invisibility, or intangibility, is just one factor that distinguishes services marketing from product marketing. Along with inseparability, variability, and perishability, these four characteristics affect the way clients behave during the buying process and the way organizations must interact with them.