Stretch Your Advertising Dollars
from Entrepreneur
There's never been a better time to get great deals on advertising, marketing and public relations. Not only are newspapers and magazines scrambling to survive, but marketing professionals who were too busy to return your calls when times were flush are now sitting at their desks waiting for the phone to ring. More

How to Win Frugal Consumers and Influence Them to Buy
from BusinessWeek
American shoppers are complex: They're excitable, but often creatures of habit; sensitive to influence, but harder to manipulate than marketers like to acknowledge. And now, as Americans consume more sparingly, an already complicated retail pas de deux has become even more so. More

New Diagnostic Test Keeps Your Internet Provider Honest
from Fast Company
Google has launched a new website in cooperation with a pair of nonprofit organizations. It does two things: it analyzes your network connection, and it makes companies like Comcast and TimeWarner wish that Google be wiped from the earth. By allowing access to diagnostic information about their Internet connections, the new site, called MeasurementLab.net, lets users expose interference from oppressive ISPs. In the past, some service providers have been known to stall or cap users who use more-than-average bandwidth - an unfair practice that makes net neutrality advocates livid. Last year, the FCC censured Comcast for "secretly degrading" the speed of users of peer-to-peer clients like BitTorrent, a practice known as discriminatory network management. More

A Look at Three Viral Marketing Techniques
from Inventor Spot
When we think of viruses, we start conjuring up negative images. But when it comes to Internet promotion, viral marketing is the best thing that could happen to a business, website, blog or social network. Yes, coming down with "viral fever" is definitely a contagion we would all like to catch, because it’s a lucrative process that builds exponentially. More

How to Renegotiate Your Lease
from Forbes
Variable costs like payroll, office supplies and advertising usually draw first blood in a recession. But some ostensibly fixed burdens are ripe for whittling, too, if you know how to negotiate. A big one: leased real estate. In this market, even agreements inked for the next five or 10 years are open for negotiation. Indeed, landlords have all but come to expect the conversation. More

Top Five Ways for Small Businesses to Succeed in a Rough Economy
from SmartBiz
Despite the challenging times that small companies are up against today, there are still many opportunities and silver linings for small business owners to capitalize on with the right business model and implementation strategy in place. As the founder and CEO of Priority Pay Payroll, one of the country’s premier payroll processors, Jerry Carter is intimately familiar with the challenges that beset small business owners during these difficult economic times. So, what’s his secret? More

How Good CEOs Will Handle the Recession
from Newsweek
They carry briefcases, not resuscitation equipment. But if a consulting team from AlixPartners suddenly shows up at your office, it's rarely a good sign. For more than two decades Alix has led turnarounds of troubled companies, many of them teetering near bankruptcy. But in the past few months, chief executive Fred Crawford has suddenly started hearing from a different group of potential clients: healthy firms worrying about the credit crunch and the deepening recession. More

Why Doing Things Half Right Gives the Best Results
from The Harvard Business Review
There are times in life when we expect something to be perfect. When we open the box of a new Macbook Air, for example. Or when we take money out of the ATM. In most cases though, we expect imperfect. And in organizations, the author suggests, that's a good thing -- but not in the if-I-expect-imperfect-I-won't-be-disappointed sense. He’s not suggesting you settle for imperfect. He’s telling you to shoot for it. More