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Businesses today are hunkering down. With consumers clutching their wallets more tightly, companies are scrutinizing every budget item in an effort to maintain profitability even as revenues are flat and costs rise. And with marketing commonly viewed as a discretionary spend, it is one of the likeliest victims of the ax.

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In the luxury brand business, stretching brands too thinly across market segments may gain short-term revenue increases, but it also almost guarantees long-term loss to the shareholders, brand owners, and, well, consumers. So, set your limits for how much you really want to stretch your brand before you open your doors to the public.

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Email is not dying in the midst of the social-media revolution. In fact, the question we should be asking is: How can email marketers best leverage the new social-marketing applications?

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It is essential that you make it easy for customers to find you, and one of the most effective ways to do so is search engine optimization, which focuses on getting your Web site listed in the unpaid, organic search engine results. How do you actually get your Web site ranked high in search engines? The answer is quite simple, but getting there can be a bit more difficult.

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Michael Antman's recent article, "Six Reasons Word-of-Mouth Doesn't Work," struck a chord. He raises reasonable points about the limitations of WOM; after all, it can't completely replace other forms of marketing communications. However, we can't ignore the impact of WOM. What's more, here's what companies should be doing to leverage it.

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Email continues to be a highly effective channel. But for too many marketers, email revenue per subscriber is not growing, and more and more subscribers are simply ignoring the messages. How can we continue to grow our email programs?

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It takes time and experience to stay on the cutting edge of SEO, and more than likely you don't have that kind of time, considering your other marketing efforts. So here's a quick update on what's hot and what's not in the world of search engine optimization.

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Change is inevitable: As an economy matures, ages, and ultimately evolves into something new, adjustments must be made to our business development, marketing, and branding. Failure to adapt to new realities results in potentially unwanted and dramatic consequences. We are all aware of how modern economies have developed from those based on agriculture, to those based on industry, and then on information. But where do we stand now? Is the information economy dead? If so, what's replaced it?

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Now that we know that 85% of B2B customers use the Internet at some point during the buying process, why is it that so many business executives still contend that online marketing "doesn't work" for businesses with enterprise solutions or complex sales cycles?

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It's a marketer's dream. Customers are so passionate about your product they actually crave it. In fact, outside of the US, your product is the number-one consumed fruit. However, here's where the dream hits reality. You're in the US, where two-thirds of US consumers have never tasted a mango. You've been hired to generate sales during the Mexican mango season—which is only four months long. One thing is crystal clear: You have to get it right the first time. Or mangos will be out of season and you'll be out of a job. That's the situation that our firm, Lewis & Neale Public Relations and JRS Consulting, faced when EMEX, an association of Mexican mango producers and shippers, retained it to conduct a four-month campaign (limited to Mexican mango season) to increase fresh mango visibility and consumption in the US.

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You already know the importance of a permission-based email list. You even practice list segmentation to improve the relevance of the emails you send to your customers and prospects. But how much time do you devote to cleaning your email list? If your email hygiene is lax, you're greatly limiting the success of your campaigns.

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There's a lot that China could do better, like every country in the world. But the Beijing Olympics PR machine is failing badly to put a positive spin on anything. So, what are they doing wrong?

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Marketers have become masters of segmentation inside our own organizations. We've segmented ourselves into Lead Generators. Message Makers. Brand Stewards. Useful, of course—in fact, indispensable. But indispensable the way facilities management is indispensable. Or travel management. Or any other organization that an enterprise relies on, but cannot be easily shown to have direct impact on revenue. And if you don't have direct impact on revenue, you don't directly impact profit. And if you don't do that, you're second in line for everything—except maybe workforce reductions.

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It's an ugly truth, but a truth nonetheless: Marketers are sinners. We're not talking lying or cheating or stealing or coveting here. We're talking about the sin of assumption. And many of us commit that sin on a regular basis, from assumptions about what to say to assumptions about how to say it.

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You've wolfed down lunch in record time and have seven minutes before your next meeting—time enough to Google "customer service tips," which brings up terabytes of platitudes on friendliness, knowledge, going the extra mile, blah, blah, blah. You know these cookie-cutter best-practices probably work, but they're too obvious and stale to motivate your people toward new plateaus. Instead, try on these three unusual mindsets that your team may actually find useful.

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Matt Strain is director of worldwide relationship marketing at Adobe, where after just three years he is recognized as a Marketing Champion who adds financial value to the company. He has had a distinguished career in technology marketing. He recently took time to share his thoughts about what makes him successful and offered advice to fellow marketers for getting ahead in our challenging and competitive field.

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It starts simply. You're setting up fields for your email signup form and instead of grabbing just the basics for information, you start to wander: What if I got all the information I want up front? So then it begins: name, address, home number, work number, mobile number, bag phone number, AOL IM, Yahoo IM, favorite band, favorite station, favorite team. Suddenly, users are looking at a form worthy of governmental consideration.

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Is there any form of marketing communications more compelling than word-of-mouth, the enthusiastic and genuine recommendation of a person you like and trust? It's no wonder that virtually every business-to-business marketer prizes this organic, spontaneous, and—perhaps best of all—practically cost-free method of bringing in business. But some businesses, especially on the B2B side, rely far too heavily on organic word-of-mouth strategies and, specifically, on acquiring new customers primarily through referrals.

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When the economy gets tight, customers can take forever to reach a buying decision. So, managers think up incentives that will encourage the customer to buy. Whatever lure you use should inspire the prospective customer to edge a little closer to a purchase, which is sometimes easier said than done.

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Given how critically important effective content is right now and how important copywriters are to the creation of same - it might help the cause of world peace and mutual understanding to shine a little light on things. How do you choose a good freelance copywriter and how do you increase the odds of getting through a successful project? Here are a few ideas to help you make better decisions, which can pay real dividends.