EFFECT[ive] Marketing is meant to be a discussion center and resource for small–business owners and operators.

Our goal is to initiate and host a dialog, to be an interpreter, between evolving marketing strategies and practices in the web–based economy and business operators who, because their products and services can only be sold in the real world, need effective ways to apply those strategies to their local, on–premise businesses.

A quick search online, or even a detailed search, on “online marketing” or “web marketing” will return hundreds of millions of hits, some small proportion of which offer useful information – but you’d be hard-pressed to find even a handful of those that pertain to online marketing for offline, brick-and-mortar businesses. And until some rocket scientist figures out how to beam someone a haircut, e-mail a hot meal or Tweet a new roof, offline service businesses are stuck doing business in the real world. But that shouldn’t mean they’re stuck with old, obsolete marketing strategies.

We’ll talk here about marketing strategy, tactics and principles, using examples of what’s effective and what’s not. We’ll talk in English and not in marketing–speak. We’ll occasionally present case studies on customer service gone bad—not to vent or to beat up the companies or individuals responsible, but as lessons, to analyze what went wrong and what could have been done differently to prevent the disaster or to turn it into a positive experience for both parties. And, because customer service plays a pivotal role in successful marketing, and management sets the level and tone of customer service, we’ll toss in the occasional thought on leadership philosophy and principles.

We invite your insights and comments. After all, it’s not much of a discussion without them.