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Chris Maher is president of Fosforus, a business-to-business marketing, media, and interactive design firm based in Austin, Texas. Those of you who have read his writing on MarketingProfs know that Chris is a little different from your average agency guy. He beats a drum about real connections (not just marketing) with real people (not just customers). Lately, he's also been worrying about the effect of all this marketing and advertising on the human soul, and thinking about the longer-term implications for our culture and society. These dog days of summer offer a perfect time to pause for some perspective, and reflect on some of the larger issues inherent in marketing and advertising today.

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Many marketing professionals are trapped in discerning the best tradeshows, direct mail pieces or advertising layouts. But the truth is that great marketing starts with the "who." It starts with finding the right people and putting them in the right jobs. Indeed, the "whats" are important, but only in context of "first who."

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Simple is a lot harder than it looks. Indeed, to achieve simplicity, an organization needs to be genuinely customer-focused. Extra investment will be required, as well as a special commitment from designers and management. Is it worth it? Certainly, organizations such as Apple and Google are showing that simplicity can become a genuine competitive advantage.

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A good marketing plan is in essence the Cliff Notes version of the company's current status, how it got there and what if anything needs to be addressed. In other words, a good marketing plan has all the elements of a well-told story.

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For many organizations, 'tis the season to shop for talent, especially copywriters. But it's awfully hard to look beyond the exterior to identify the talent who will really work for you. And while there are no fool-proof formulas for finding winners, you can take measures—right at the start of your relationship—that give you a much greater probability of success.

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This week: It's rare to find a fast-food restaurant that doesn't offer a combo that's a better deal than each item purchased separately. Does it make sense for service businesses to offer their customers the same "deal"?

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Organizations serious about improving their email programs, especially their subscriber opt-in rates, should allocate marketing and development resources toward improving their Web site's onsite registration process. If you're ready to turn your Web site into an email opt-in machine, consider implementing some of the following enhancements.

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Companies everywhere are struggling to differentiate their offerings. They dream of establishing an unassailable market position for their solutions, a position that will enable them to capture a lion's share of the customer's mind and wallet. But to their frustration, no matter how enticingly and expertly their portraits of the solutions are painted—to customers, their solutions and their competitor's solutions usually end up looking amazingly alike. There is a solution.

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There is an emerging group of business mavens—mompreneurs. Mompreneurs are more than just a great tale of free enterprise. They're a market phenomenon that has emerged for several key reasons.

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Companies like Intel, IBM and Adobe are leveraging Marketing Operations to improve performance and ROI as they refine their marketing organizations using an operational focus. But you don't have to be an Intel or Adobe to benefit from this emerging discipline. Here are the seven deadliest marketing sins that plague companies of all sizes and how Marketing Operations addresses them.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

The Web is not a great place to win hearts and minds. It is not a great place to convince people to do something they did not come to the Web already intending to do. Traditional marketing techniques, such as brand name repetition and the use of images to communicate brand attributes, don't work as well online. What works well on the Web is a useful Web site that wastes no time and gets straight to the point for your customers. Do you know what your customers want when they come to your Web site?

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You know the truth will set you free. Hopefully, the truth will also help you create great marketing results. Here are three communications myths whose time has come to an end.

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In the e-commerce business, securing trust in your company is essential to your success. And an essential element of building that trust, with both customers and partners, is the assurance that your e-commerce operation meets the demanding security standards required of organizations handling sensitive financial information.

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Entrepreneurs see the world in a different way. Different perspectives foster innovation. All around a given community, there are hundreds of success stories of mom-and-pop operations that have grown successful enterprises in all types of product and service areas. Seek out and engage these entrepreneurs—they have something to teach us.

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Are all the consumer options available today actually serving customers better, or does the exhaustive selection overwhelm (and ultimately discourage) potential buyers? What if all the great new products and models lining the shelves were actually inspiring would-be buyers to decide...well, not to decide? That's where doing your homework of editing choices, or "curating," for the customer comes in.

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With paid search, you pay only for click-throughs to your site. Such accountability is a marketer's delight, but that's only half the story. What about all the people who found the site, saw the pitch but didn't buy?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

You've heard it many times: If you want your marketing materials to do their job, you have to stress benefits, not features. Ultimately, your target readers don't care about what your product does. They care about what your product does for them. But with all the focus on "benefits," it's easy to forget that benefits don't work in a vacuum. Whenever you write copy, there's more you must always keep in mind.

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Consider this: the US is the only place in the world where you can go almost 3,000 miles in one direction without having to change language, currency or culture. Virtually everywhere else in the world, anyone covering such a distance would encounter up to a dozen or more international borders, with significant differences in language, culture and tradition. As the world economy becomes more integrated, the importance of top-quality translations will only continue to grow.

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Professional services marketing literature is full of claims about the quality of offerings and dedication to client results. Without a guarantee to back up those words, though, clients just perceive them as empty promises. If you're serious about service excellence and client results, put some teeth into your assertions.

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Obviously, one of the great technical innovations of our time is the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee. Here, he speaks about the launch of the next generation of his creation: the Semantic Web. What is the Semantic Web? It's a "smarter," more useful resource that enables a new dimension of archiving and search.