The healthcare industry is one of the few bright spots in the overall U.S. economy, unless you're a business owner or employee whose costs are rising.

Marketing in the financial services industry is a bit like trying to negotiate a Zen koan: How does a company get bigger and smaller at the same time?

With the growth of the Internet, and the exponential increase in the information available online, the b-to-b model resembles the b-to-c model much more closely than ever before.

Targeting everything from advertising to promotions has improved returns, but consumers are increasingly reluctant to give up the demographic information necessary to make such targeting possible.

Organizations of all stripes--charitable and arts groups, community groups and professional associations--are wielding blunt marketing messages and making more direct appeals to keep their operating budgets afloat.

The economics that drive the higher education industry are in many ways divorced from the considerations of other industries: Recessions depress enrollments (i.e. revenues) but often that's not as important to a college's financial health as, say, alumni contributions, the success of the football team or the direction of the stock market.