In a world where consumers divide their time among ever increasing media options, finding the right customers for your business presents constant challenges. Here are the five areas where growing businesses most often trip up in their marketing efforts:

Standing out from dozens of other e-mails means having a strong subject line. You can have a longer subject, but make sure you hit the “beef” (buzzword, attention grabber, etc.) within the first 25 characters. Think about that viewing window, too ...

In their new book, Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship, Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig offer many salient points on customer relationship building. Here are 10 worth heeding:

Instead of networking with potential customers, consider networking with other businesses that can help you succeed, suggests Alan Bayham, president of Bayham Consulting, LLC. With this approach, the companies within your circle of influence refer customers to each other and also share skills and expertise to enhance their own business. Bayham offers these tips to make your sales lead generation endeavors with other businesses succeed:

If you need more hyperlinks pointing to your site, try this: Google 20 keywords clients use to find you. Send an e-mail to contacts at those sites explaining the synergies between your services and ask to trade links.

The 10th annual Trust Barometer study conducted by the Edelman PR firm shows that trust in businesses has plummeted. Factor that into your marketing! Besides showcasing “trust” factors like years in business and client testimonials, be more transparent in showing clients your business practices.

I have always contended that social networking is not a cost-effective use of the solopreneur’s time. Now data from a new survey by Michael Stelzner confirm it.

Keeping employees productive is hard work, especially if the workplace is stressful or personnel feel undervalued. To improve productivity, you need to keep your people engaged and motivated in their work. Here’s how to go about it:

Here are five niche marketing tips to consider:

Remember the Yellow Pages slogan “Let your fingers do the walking"? Well, forget walking! Instead, check out these web sites that let your fingers do the digging, prospecting and streamlining to help your business grow.

We constantly hear about this blogger or that blogger getting paid big bucks to blog or landing a lucrative book deal based on their blog (I actually did the latter myself). But these lucky rich bloggers are decidedly the exception, not the rule.

Futurist Richard Laermer believes the cultural trend toward mistrusting large companies will only grow. Growing businesses can capitalize on this trend, Laermer contends, by avoiding these mistakes:

Faced with a challenging economy, growing companies have to work even harder and smarter on their brand-building efforts to attract customers and prospects. Here are two ways to go about it:

The more hyperlinks that point to your web site, the higher up you’ll rank in search engine results. So how popular are you today? The Link Popularity Checker can help you find out, free.

I saw an e-mail exchange today between a famous sales trainer and a successful information marketer and copywriter. In it, the sales trainer arrogantly proclaimed: “Marketing is for people who can’t sell.”

As I see it, the potential of blogging as a negative force hurting your product sales is actually greater than its potential as a positive force spurring sales.

Web sites don’t last forever. Some changes can be accomplished with simple maintenance, but patching can take you only so far. Here are five signs that it’s time to revamp your site.

A survey of 741 small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) by Breeding Business Information (BBI) revealed that SMBs prefer print over the Internet as a source of product information.

Would you recommend that a friend buy medicine from Johnson & Johnson? Insurance from AIG? Do you trust Google? These are the kinds of questions people answered about 153 American companies...

The Internet is where it’s at in marketing today, and online video is exploding.

In the middle of a downturn, everyone is looking for an upside. Here are eight marketing strategies to gain momentum in a sluggish economy...

During a recession, many businesses experience a decrease in revenues. Amazingly, a number are implementing what has to be the stupidest recession-fighting business strategy ever devised: charging customers MORE to make up for the lost revenue.

We asked our favorite entrepreneurs for the tips and tricks they have used to pilot their businesses through difficult times. The result: 23 things you can do right now to energize your employees, wow your customers, and get your business back on track...

The problem with SEO copywriting is that the mandate to use keywords according to various rules set forth by SEO experts can result in awkward, ineffective, suboptimal copy.

The first two quotations come from writing professors whose names I've since forgotten (and they were quoting other people whom they'd forgotten). The last one is one I just made up myself. But regardless of the source, the advice is sound: no email should be clicked-to-send without revision.