The marketing budget for a local, service-based business is a tiny fraction of what a global company spends on marketing. Yet small marketers with limited resources sometimes outshine the big guys when it comes to marketing effectiveness, especially in direct mail.

Here’s how a regional painting business in Cleveland, Ohio nailed a prospect direct mail campaign with a simple postcard, while Dell, a huge business-to-business marketer, committed several cardinal sins of direct marketing in a B2B direct mail promotion — plus four lessons for your smart marketing strategy.

A marketer has a few seconds at best to engage the audience in an ad or marketing message. But many marketers forget this simple fact when they develop marketing campaigns using elaborate or confusing creative concepts.

When the audience’s reaction to an ad is “Huh?” instead of “Wow!,” it’s a painful waste of marketing resources. Here are three examples of advertising and marketing campaigns that fail the “Huh?” test – and three tips to avoid making mistakes like this in your smart marketing strategy.

Are you getting the results you want from your website?

Whether you’re a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) marketer, a great website is essential for a smart marketing strategy.

Here are 10 ideas to boost the marketing value of your website through higher traffic, better search engine rankings, and more effective engagement with your customers and prospects.

You’d expect marketing agencies on Madison Avenue and Michigan Avenue to be producing world-class work for big companies. But how about marketing agencies in Cleveland, Ohio?

Major marketers can choose agencies anywhere in the world, yet more and more are selecting marketing teams in Northeast Ohio.

Top executives from three regional agencies and a large Midwestern bank explained why global brands and other market leaders are “Choosing Cleveland” at a NOCA (Northeast Ohio Communications Advocates) Forum at the Cleveland Plain Dealer on April 27.

Here’s how these local firms are landing prestigious accounts and helping national and local clients create smart marketing strategies.

Take a look inside the next direct mail package you receive and you might discover something’s missing: The reply card.

Business reply cards (BRCs) and reply forms with postpaid envelopes (BREs) have been core elements of direct mail since the medium began. But they’ve been notably absent from some recent direct marketing campaigns I’ve received.

Is this a new trend? A test? A fundamental shift? Here are some insights for your smart marketing strategy.

Nearly every marketing consultant is advising their clients to create a blog. Why? Because blogging is one of the best ways to increase website traffic and improve search engine rankings.

But let’s be honest: Blogging can be a big commitment. A smart marketer has to ask, is it worth the time and effort? Can someone prove that it really works? And what can you do to increase your odds of success, especially if you’re in business-to-business (B2B) marketing?

Here’s how traffic to my website skyrocketed in one year thanks to the addition of a blog, and four lessons from this blogging case study for your smart marketing strategy.

A fresh creative concept is crucial for effective advertising and a smart marketing strategy.

But too many advertising and marketing campaigns recycle the same, tired creative themes and copy phrases over and over and over.

This is more than annoying. It’s a guaranteed audience turn-off and a misuse of the marketer’s resources.

Here’s the 2011 edition of my annual list of the most overused creative themes in marketing. How many do you recognize?

Direct mail is often used to reactivate lapsed customers, but few direct marketers do it well. Instead of a powerful, personalized appeal that rekindles the relationship, they turn the customer off with a generic message, irrelevant content, and a “so what?” offer.

But when a direct marketer gets it right, with a highly personalized, data-driven message, a compelling offer, and a warm invitation to re-engage, it’s a thing of marketing beauty. Here’s how a major women’s retailer – Chico’s – nailed it with their customer win-back direct mail campaign, and six lessons from their direct marketing success story that you can apply to your smart marketing strategy.

Are you getting a good return on your investment in marketing? Could it be better?

One way to find out is to conduct a top-to-bottom review of your entire marketing plan to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

This process is sometimes called a marketing audit. I’m often asked to guide audits as an independent marketing consultant and I recently shared advice on how to do an audit effectively.

What specific factors should you assess in a marketing audit? Here are 40 questions I recommend for evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing and developing a smarter marketing strategy.

Super Bowl XLV is history and so is the advertising that generated so much buzz and discussion before, during, and now, after the game.

Best and worst ad lists are everywhere after a Super Bowl, and there generally is agreement among marketing experts about the winners and losers.

But when you look more closely at Super Bowl ads, a smart marketer has to wonder about their strategic marketing value. According to the Wall Street Journal, marketers spent $2.8 million to $3 million for a 30-second spot during this year’s matchup. Did the massive investment these marketers made in Super Bowl ads pay off? And even if the ads were clever, were they a smart marketing strategy?

Here are 10 criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising from my experience as a strategic marketing consultant, and my take on how ads from last night’s Super Bowl measured up