These articles were originally published in Markitek's newsletter, Fresh Focus, delivered to Marketing professionals around the world.

In Praise of the Buying Cycle
Understanding the "marketing synapses" within your buying cycle is key to developing marketing opportunities.

Don't Ignore Your Customers
A look at how we ignore our customers—and how to avoid it.

Lifetime Customer Value Drives Budgets
The lifetime value of your customer should be the basis of your marketing budgets.

Building the Marketing Budget
The hard value of a marketing program is the only basis for the budget allocated to it.

Strategic Public Relations
Why strategic public relations has little to do with press releases.

Loyalty Programs
When determining what makes a customer loyal, ask yourself: what makes a friend loyal?

Chief Marketing Technologists
Markitek thinks it's time to look at creating another C-level post: one that blends IT and Marketing.

Marrying IT and Marketing
Thoughts on permanently removing the chasm that separates Marketing and IT.

The Mechanics of Marketing
An analogy between correcting the mechanics of golf or tennis and correcting the mechanics of marketing is helpful.

The True Measure of Marketing
Measuring Marketing successfully, means focusing on the things Marketing is really supposed to do.

Customer Retention Strategies In Action
Amazon does it right.

Customer Retention Strategies
Retaining customers is a matter of a little common sense.

What Do Your Customers Want? Don't Ask Them
Product development and enhancement teams spend a lot of time asking customers want they want. Wrong question.

Hidden Obstacles to Crafting a Successful Strategy
Making a strategy successful involves a good deal of work behind the scenes.

The Process of Marketing Process
Bringing a respect for process into your marketing team today involves good marketing.

Aligning Collateral to the Buying Cycle
The development of collateral is a focused, targeted, precise process. And the focus is supporting each phase of the buying cycle.

A Marketing Education
Your marketing team needs to understand your customers . . . before they can understand your products.

ROI Is No USP
Using Return on Investment as a sell-side sales proposition is about as useful as bragging that a vehicle "moves forward in Drive" is to a car dealer.

On the Web, Everyone Can Hear You Lie
Marketers think that they can make just about any claim they want, as long as it isn't an outright lie. Time was this was true, because claims were untraceable. Not any more.

Branding Schmanding
KPMG is now Bearing Point. They're putting a lot of money into getting the word out. And you'd think they'd do a bang up job of it. Instead of just getting banged up by us.

Wrong Market. Wrong Time
AOL wants to bring instant messaging to the enterprise. We don't think so.

When Branding Doesn't Work
For companies selling non-commodity products to a knowledgeable marketplace, branding plays no part. Strictly for cows and coffee.

Positioning for B2B
The act of positioning is a core element of a successful marketing strategy. It informs, identifies and lays the foundation for the relationships with the multiple marketplaces a company serves. First in a series.

Strategic Pricing
Developing a pricing strategy perplexes many CEOs, marketing and sales executives, and brand managers. But there are a few basic guidelines that can help take some of the mystery out of the process of establishing a successful pricing strategy.