Ten days before Christmas, and about a week before shipping cutoff, we're finally/suddenly coming up on the end of the holiday season. If you're in a typical marketing department, you've likely been in such a crunch that you haven't had time to take advantage of this year's great deals or even tell others what you'd like for the holidays.

've been obsessed with creating promotions recently. I've been studying the art of positioning promotions and precisely how a promotion is launched, and I've been experimenting with what I've learned. Let's talk about two promotions.

Isn't she amazing?!? Yes I'm a little biased, since she is my offspring. But still, you have to admit it's impressive when a kid can start an online business and make it onto the speaking circuit by the age of 16, and have such composure in front of the camera.

Many look at social media as another outlet to pump their marketing messages into, especially companies which have found that success in other channels of marketing such as SEO, PPC, e-mail, or traditional marketing outlets like TV, radio, or print have slowed or come to a virtual standstill. They read that Foursquare is the next "Internet darling" of social media and is being used and touted by early adopters.

Building an effective YouTube profile doesn’t necessarily need to be time-intensive, but like any other social media platform solid marketing requires commitment and constant upkeep.

A landing page testing program has to be established before becoming an ongoing or periodic activity in the online marketing department. The success of the first test is critical for establishing the long-term momentum for subsequent tests. Let's look at some strategies you could pursue as you get started.

As SEO rapidly becomes a core task for local business owners, there’s a new temptation to build advertising messages or tracking mechanisms into business listings on the web. Typically, this might mean adding a slogan or campaign tagline to a business name or changing an office address to appear local to more customers. Unfortunately, this misguided enthusiasm can negatively impact the way search engines rank local business listings based on variations in company name, address and phone number (NAP, for short).