By Jerry Rackley

I worked at a small software company from 1993 to 2000. It was a great environment and learning laboratory. In fact, some of the most practical and relevant marketing lessons learned during my career came from this period. Quite often, these lessons were learned the hard way, from making mistakes. Fortunately, we were quick learners and, and we recovered from our mistakes. Lessons learned the hard way stick with you.

By Jerry Rackley

Thanks goes out to Douglas Wray, about whom little is known but who has attained social media cult hero status in my book.  We have not been able to locate Mr. Wray, but a possible photograph of the elusive social media guru does exist:

By Charles Gold, Demand Metric member

We market differently than we did ten years ago.  Even five.  But many of us haven't rethought how we're organized or how we think about what we do.

I want to propose a new model -- one that builds on the foundations that we've always needed, but adds in the tactics that are now critical. Most importantly, it shows the interconnections that are now necessary for marketing to be truly effective.

This short Prezi (interactive presentation) walks through the model.

Demand Metric now has over 20,000 members, a one-third increase in membership in just six months, and the company is on track to approach full-year membership growth of 100 percent by the end of 2012.

By Jerry Rackley

I recently attempted to dialogue with a journalist who was doing a story about out-of-the-box marketing ideas. I haven’t yet seen the story, but I was bold enough to make a prediction to her in my email:

"I suspect you'll get fewer, quality ideas than you'd like because the companies that are really good at coming up with these ideas use them to gain a competitive advantage. They're unlikely to pull back the curtain and let everyone see what they've got and how they do it."