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What’s the latest thinking in B2B marketing? What techniques and trends are today’s best practice B2B marketers using to drive more revenue and demonstrate accountability?

Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin” invites its readers to give up slides altogether, and use flipcharts and blackboards instead. The central idea is visual thinking, drawing graphics as you explain them, rather than taking audiences through endless bullet points. The book is full of practical advice for doing this. A must read. Garr Reynold’s “Presentationzen” is a plea for preparing your presentation offline. Rather than a method, it introduces a presentation philosophy, heavily influenced by Asian culture. The central idea is simplicity. While obviously influencing many of today’s speakers, the concept of presentationzen is relatively unproven for complex subjects, such as science or technology. Nevertheless, a must read.

If you are thinking about doing a virtual conference or tradeshow, you might want to read Best Practices in Virtual Events, a white paper created by The FactPoint Group, a Silicon Valley-based research, and consulting firm, for Unisfair, a provider of virtual trade shows, expos, conferences and marketing events.

Therefore, I’m pleased that the Custom Publishing Council announces the first-ever but very timely conference in this emerging field, to be held in New Orleans March 9-11. The conference targets practitioners and solution providers alike and covers both strategic and practical aspects.

Many preference centers are great ideas that are poorly executed -- not because the registration page isn't functional or the users can't update their profiles, but because of  mismatched expectations.  When many marketers are still grappling with permission management practices (opt-in vs. opt-out), why add another layer of consumer management to the problem? 

Every senior executive knows that business decisions are seldom better than the information behind them. Yet although it is usually lower-level employees who interact directly with the customer, decision makers rarely ask them how, for example, new products will fare. Leaders therefore deprive themselves of information that could enrich their analysis and reduce the risk of ivory tower decision making. Some executives understand that valuable information lies scattered around the organization but don’t know how to retrieve it. Others don’t even try, perhaps for hierarchical reasons or because they suspect they might get answers colored by the desire to second their real or assumed viewpoint.

Take a deep breath and relax; building a widget isn't rocket science. But in this nascent world of distributed content, where standards are not yet established, understanding your options along with some generally accepted best practices will help you make smart design and development choices for your project.  So how do you determine what's right for your widget? From timing to technical specs, here's a how-to for budgets large and small, whether you have in-house designers and developers or are looking to outsource, and anything in-between

That event was one of my best learning experiences.  It reinforced the need to meet with learners and understand their world.  It also opened my eyes to think beyond the obvious.  A big pitfall is that we tend to rest in the familiar. Without the time on the floor, I would have built a functional course, but missed the opportunity to make real improvements on their performance.

Take a new approach to list growth. Ask!There are a surprising number of companies that, for whatever reason, fail to prominently position opt-in requests on their Web site. With the prominence of search driving customers deeper into Web sites and bypassing the home page, companies need to request email addresses more often and in more locations.

Today, MarketingSherpa released the 2008 edition of its Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. According to the press release: "the updated guide delivers exclusive results data from real-life marketers' campaigns. Containing 260-charts and tables, this is the largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted with professional email marketers. Readers will learn how the impact of email marketing has changed over the past year and how to overcome various future challenges of email marketing."

Let's review some best practices for writing text, or pay-per-click ads.

Imagine going to your Doctor because you’re not feeling well. Before you’ve had a chance to describe your symptoms, the doctor writes out a prescription and says “take two of these three times and day, and call me in a week.” “But – I haven’t told you what’s wrong,” you say. “How do I know this will help me?”“Why wouldn’t it” says the doctor. “It worked for last two patients”

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives.