They say that during a recession, people flock to education to survive. In that spirit, I’ll be covering topics in my marketing glossary in the coming months. Today’s topic is one of my favorite, because it is very powerful when used properly, and doesn’t require any upfront costs.

One of the hardest jobs of a marketer is to find a targeted audience for his/her message. After all, the odds of someone outside the targeted audience buying are very low, and probably not worth the communication and sales effort, until you have exhausted all likely buyers.

One of the really irritating things about tires is their proclivity for developing tiny leaks.  This leaves you feeling like a Russian Roulette player each time you step in your car, wondering if this time your tire will burst.

Fortunately, my experience with punctured tires hasn’t been all bad – it led me to find a mechanic a few years back who, while having far from the newest equipment in his garage, more than made up for it with the mental equipment he had acquired through experience.

JetBlue has always had creative marketing programs, like its customer bill of rights. JetBlue is back at it again, and has sent out a press release detailing its “Promise Program“. Under the Promise Program, JetBlue will refund your ticket fare if you lose your job (with some additional terms attached, of course).

This is an effective marketing program, because many people are hesitant to purchase tickets in the future at a time when the “future” is so uncertain.  This takes out some of the risk to the ticket buyer which is at the root of the problem for many customers.

Jackie Huba, of Church of the Customer, and author of Creating Customer Evangelists recently had a funny video about customer feedback which illustrates the importance of companies not just hearing customer feedback, but also making it clear when customer feedback has been the cause of a change to the product or service.

Please watch as Jackie describes what happened:

Summary of the Video:

Jackie buys goat milk from Whole Foods, and the milk needs to be shaken each time before use. However, when she shakes it the milk flies all over the place because the carton lacks a tight seal.  The next time she visits Whole Foods she notices the milk carton has a cap, and has text right near it stating “Customer Requested”.

If you’ve been paying attention to the media, you know that the long talked about recession is upon us. As gas and food prices rise, many consumers are left wondering how to adjust their budgets accordingly. Self-sufficiency skills, long seen as a thing of the past, are back in vogue.

I recently discussed how to recession-proof your career, and some readers asked what accompanying lifestyle changes they should make. Today, I’d like to recommend a few changes that the average consumer can make to help get through this recession without feeling too much of the strain.

How often do you find yourself contemplating a task, only to avoid getting started on it and move on to something else?

Procrastination is a major problem for everyone, but especially dangerous for entrepreneurs. After all, when you work for yourself, YOU set the pace. If that pace is slow, profits will be slow as well. Beating procrastination, however, can be accomplished with a few simple tips.

1. Baby Steps

If you find yourself struggling to get started on a project, consider breaking it down into the smallest tasks possible. Then complete one (or a few) of these tiny tasks. You’ll gain momentum with each micro-task that you complete, allowing you to knock out procrastination quickly and painlessly.

If you run an e-commerce website then you likely are tracking metrics such as: total sales revenue, how many total purchases were made, and general visitor stats. Today, we’ll look at a few other metrics you can (and should) use in order to get your e-commerce website performing at its best.

Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Definition: The percentage of shoppers who place an item in their shopping cart but do not successfully complete checkout.

Causes:

• Anxiety over having chosen the right product
• Fear over the security of giving out credit card details
• Confusion about how to checkout

Each year, I play a fun guessing game on which day(s) will be the biggest online selling days of the year. My “bet” for this year is going to be mid-day Dec. 12th -13. Why that particular day and a half? Allow me to explain:

Paycheck syndrome

In bad economies, we are less likely to have cash sitting around. This particular recession is no exception, and because this recession is partially caused by the credit crunch, we are certainly less likely to have cash. Therefore, we are more likely to spend based on our paycheck date. We are especially more likely to purchase something expensive near the time we are getting a paycheck (thursday evening) in anticipation of having the money, or when we have an actual paycheck in hand (friday).

Telecommuting to work, or working from home, is becoming more common each year. The recent price hike on gas, now thankfully behind us, provided ample incentive for businesses to re-examine their policy on telecommuting, and may prove to be the catalyst for an already occurring trend. During the $4 gas period, some companies offered 4 day work-weeks (10 hours a day) and others permitted working from home, with weekly in-office meetings.

While the price of gas hurt businesses, it really took a toll on the daily driver. I figured this would be an opportune time to point out some advantages to working from home.

While over 71 million Americans tuned in to watch the election night results, CNN viewers were treated to a new technology. Using dozens of cameras and sophisticated hologram technology partly developed in Israel, Jessica Yellin was “beamed” in to Wolf Blitzer’s studio in a very realistic display. Over half a million viewers have seen this Youtube clip showing the hologram effect. Additionally, “cnn hologram” was the 22nd most searched term on Google shortly following the coverage – people wanted to know how it works.