Biggest Online Growth.  Online advertising continues its rapid increase, growing by 34% last year.  By far the largest portion of online spending is devoted to paid search (pay-per-click), which now accounts for 42% of  online advertising budgets. Click Fraud Concerns.  Companies are becoming increasingly concerned about “click fraud” – repeated clicks by unscrupulous competitors or paid […]

The most popular feature in the last issue of Let’s Grow involved some surprising research from MIT on the long-term effects of how out-of-stock issues are handled.  The same MIT group did some fascinating research on the long-term effects of discounting. The study compared the short and long term effects of offering shallow and deep discounts to […]

If you’ve never been to the web site DavesGarden.com, it’s time you paid it a visit.  And if you have, you may still have missed multiple areas that can benefit your business.  Here’s a guide to how Dave’s Garden can help you serve more customers better. What’s Dave’s Garden?  The brainchild of Dave Whitinger, DavesGarden.com […]

We’ve all seen business cards that look like miniature billboards.  When done well, they can help distinguish a company from its competitors and encourage prospects to call. The extra cost is virtually nothing. Business cards, catalogs and brochures may be the first introduction prospects have to your company, but they’re just one part of the […]

A few years ago, we developed a test campaign for a company offering a catalog of outdoor furniture.  The test included some publications in the garden market, others in the home market.  Two of those in the home market had very similar demographics and editorial content.  We’ll call them Magazine A and Magazine B. Normally, […]