A little while back, I finally got down to Blue Ocean Strategy in my ever-renewing stack of new books. Any book based not in opinion but in research gets my attention. In this case W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne spent a decade formulating their ideas based on analysis of 150 strategic moves across a variety of industries and eras (comparable to a lite version of a Jim Collins project).

According to an Outsell study conducted during the first quarter of this year, small B2B marketers are continuing to increase their online marketing efforts even during the recession. While B2C marketers have been cutting budgets across the board, B2B marketers have been more surgical, even selecting some areas to increase spending. The study found that 26% of small B2B marketers are actually planning to increase their overall spending slightly through 2009 while 60% of large B2B marketers are at least keeping spending steady, if not increasing slightly.

One of the first things you learn about market research is there are two main categories – quantitative and qualitative, i.e., the numbers and the words. Market Research 101 teachers around the world drill the differences into their students and advocate the use of both to get a complete picture of the market being studied.

Consumers aren't buying like they once were. I know it's a shocker, but I just got up feeling controversial this morning (hang with me). While it may not be news that a recession means consumers cut back, it is news if those changes become the norm; and there is some recent data that indicates that may be the case.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Of course I care what my customer wants; I'd be out of business if I didn't." But I bet you are thinking almost completely about the product or service you offer your customers. What about the way you communicate to your customer? Do you offer them information the way they want it, or are you just talking at them?

In several conversations over the last few weeks, I’ve run into some puzzled looks when I mention the term "conversion" in relation to measuring website success. "What’s this guy talking about? My website isn’t trying to make proselytes," their faces seemed to say (they had very expressive faces). Now, among the analytics/web design crowd you won’t run into any confusion on whether you’ve strayed into a theological discussion, but not all analytics terms have gone mainstream. Whether you’re a marketer on the client or agency side of the business who is responsible for a website’s success, understanding the concept of conversion is essential to achieving and measuring that success.

I saw an interesting study today on brands mentioned in tweets – one of the big concerns many clients have is that by participating in social media they are going to get a lot of negative feedback or opinions expressed about their brand. This study provides strong support for something we’ve been saying for a long time – the vast majority of brand mentions are not even expressing opinions. This review of nearly 150,000 tweets found only about 20% actually expressed an opinion and two-thirds of those were positive opinions.

Twice a year, the Duke University Fuqua School of Business conducts a survey commissioned by the American Marketing Association. They sample marketing leaders at Fortune 1000 and Forbes Top 200 companies; nearly three-quarters of participants are at the VP, CMO or higher level. The February 2009 results were recently released and there was a clear contrast between the perceptions and plans of the B2B marketers and the B2C marketers.

Remember a time when if you wanted to read a review of a product you had to search through back issues of Consumer Reports? They would even include a little index in each issue to help you find the month you needed, but if they hadn't gotten around to toaster ovens in the last year you were just out of luck. How did we survive in such conditions? Was there even indoor plumbing back then?