Permission-based marketing is now at the heart of relationships between companies and their customers and prospects. People opt-in to receive your emails, like your company on Facebook, subscribe to an RSS feed from your website or your channel on YouTube, or follow you on Twitter or LinkedIn.

But having permission to market to someone isn’t a license to bombard them with marketing messages. In fact, not knowing when to shut up is a classic marketing mistake.

Here’s how over-marketing can kill a customer or prospect relationship and 7 ways to avoid this costly error in your smart marketing strategy.

The 2011 Social Media Habit Report by Edison Research and Arbitron, reported on Hubspot last week, provides a wealth of statistics that prove the ubiquity and influence of social media.

But what’s most fascinating about this new research is the window it opens on the habits of the 46 million Americans who check social sites several times a day.

Who are these habitual social media users? And what can marketers learn from their extraordinary level of engagement with social networks?

Here’s what this important study shows and three takeaways about social media for your smart marketing strategy.

Every advertising and marketing agency is in a constant search for new business. But as a marketing agency president, I’ve learned the hard way that not all prospects should become clients.

Even if you’re a marketing agency looking to grow, sometimes it’s smarter to walk away from prospective new business than enter into a bad relationship. How do you know when to stay or go?Here are 7 warning signs that a new prospect could become a bad client for your marketing agency.

Do you know which of your customers are most profitable to your business? Or even how to measure customer profitability?

One of the best ways to gauge the value of a customer is to perform a recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis of your customer data. Here’s how RFM analysis works and seven ways you can use insights from RFM for a 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?

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

Blogging is a powerful marketing tool and an increasingly popular tactic in a smart marketing strategy, especially for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. I know, because I launched this blog to promote my Cleveland-based marketing consulting business exactly a year ago. Here are 10 lessons I’ve learned in my first year as a B2B blogger and three ways blogging has boosted my business.

What’s the best way to maximize the return on your marketing investment? Take a step back from your day-to-day marketing projects and conduct a marketing audit.

A marketing audit is a top-to-bottom assessment of your entire marketing program, from branding to tactics. The beginning of a new year or the start of a new budget period is an ideal time to do it.

How do you conduct a marketing audit? And how can an audit help you develop a smart marketing strategy? Here are some answers.

Are you thinking about renaming your company? A new name can help your customers, prospects, and competitors see you in a new light. It also can help you make a splash in the marketplace and get media attention. But changing your company name is a major undertaking that requires substantial marketing resources. Before you take the plunge, you must be sure you have the right name and a smart marketing strategy to deploy it. Here are 10 strategic marketing questions to ask yourself when selecting a new name for your company.