Top Trends for 2010

By Carolyn Rhinebarger
1. Business as UNusual
A new global understanding that Sustainability—in every conceivable meaning—is critical to our future well-being means that companies will have to do more than just embrace the notion of being a good corporate citizen. To keep customers and win new ones, you must:

display greater transparency and honesty
have conversations as opposed to [...]

Nine Client Retention Strategies To Protect Sales

By Carolyn Rhinebarger
A common concern for business is how to bring in new customers. We are trained to believe that increased revenue is dependent on our ability to constantly draw in more clients. This may have been true in prior economic environments but, today, it is not the only focus for sales growth.
Many businesses have [...]

Positioning Defined

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

In 1988, a People magazine poll showed that 44% of supermarket shoppers did not know who George Bush was even though he had been Vice President of the United States for four years.
On the other hand, 93% of the consumers recognized Mr. Clean, the genie on the bottle of the Procter & Gamble [...]

Why Do Customers Patiently Wait in Line for a $3 Cup of Joe?

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you are more than willing to stand in line to pay $3, $4, even $5 for that caffeine jolt but won’t even bother to get out of your car for lunch? And talk about impatient if you have to pull your car over to the [...]

Generation X Marketing: Understanding the Next Wave of Decision Makers

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

One of the challenges in leading marketing is differentiating between media buzz and real information. We need to react appropriately to each. Increasingly, we’re hearing about GenX, Millenials, GenY and the like. From U.S. News and World Report to MSNBC to the Boston Globe and beyond, news reports and analyses are popping up [...]

Getting A Good Fit

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

So, I was ranting about the current state of marketing by universities the other day. Since then, we have booked two more tours and the dance continues. We are trying to find a school that is (a) close to home (b) but far enough away from home c) with a really good computer [...]

Is Direct Mail Dead?

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

Some say that the advent of the internet combined with broadcast fax and telemarketing is putting an end to the use of direct mail. But consider this:
The enactment of the National Do Not Call list, in combination with screening by Caller I.D., has severely hampered telemarketing efforts. The Federal Communications Commission has all [...]

The Power Of A Guarantee

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

I guarantee you will gain something from reading this article today. Maybe you will begin to offer prospects your personal guarantee. Or perhaps you will couple a service with a product to guarantee results. Who knows? Maybe I will spark an idea for a new direction in your marketing.
My point is this: if [...]

A Marketing Lesson On Style

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

Direct mail gets tossed in the trash. No one reads the newspaper these days. Email gets caught in spam filters. What’s left to effectively market your business?
The truth is that these tactics and others all work well—and fail miserably—depending upon their execution. The failures have something in common. They didn’t appeal to the [...]

Should Your Logo Be Green?

By Carolyn Rhinebarger

A business colleague recently sent an email soliciting opinions from a select group of trusted business associates. In it, he indicated he was considering changing the color scheme of his logo to green and wanted to know if we all thought this was a good idea.
A simple question. But please, folks, don’t ever [...]