Marketing Resource Management (MRM) and Multichannel Campaign Management (MCM) platforms such as Aprimo have really taken off in the past few years, becoming a top-of-mind want - if not need - for a growing number of large and medium-sized corporate marketing departments.

Today, the most successful businesses learn to mix different messages and different stories in different places, to network and connect with relevance to people across multiple channels and to tailor their value proposition to the specific needs of their target audience.

The thought of winning a contract to supply a mass retailer is enough to make a sales manager salivate. Toys ‘R’ Us accounted for a fifth of the US toy market in 1996, The Home Depot sold more home improvement products than all hardware stores combined, and a quarter of the underwear purchased by Americans came from Wal-Mart.

In today’s business environment of tightening budgets and rigorous attention to measureable results, the expectations of marketing leaders and organizations to “raise their game” has never been higher. How well are companies responding to these changing expectations? Are marketing groups on the same page as other departments in the organization?

Everything has changed. As consumer confidence has been vacillating in the aftermath of the financial system bailout and economic stimulus programs, the Iraqi war and Afghan conflicts and the unpredictable political environment, business leaders are facing the increasingly difficult task of making their numbers while preserving opportunities to renew growth.

Marketing, which represents all the work between developing a new product and getting it sold, has been searching for a structured set of processes that could fill the gap.

The changing online landscape has important implications for marketers and how they formulate strategy.

Say the word "marketing" to a lay person and you are likely to elicit thoughts of commercials, catchy jingles and celebrity endorsers pitching new and improved products and services to customers.

Dave Sutton is the leading authority on how to plug 21st-century strategic marketing techniques and technology into a business to drive organic growth.He is the Founder and Managing Partner of TopRight, LLC a new kind of strategic marketing consultancy that helps companies corner the markets where they choose to compete.

SUSTAINED PROFITABILITY in today's fast-changing high-tech industrial markets can be elusive. Confident that a new technological break-through will have customers clamoring at the door, managers often make major investments only to discover there is no real demand for their product. And even if the new product is a market hit, earnings can be short-lived. Competitors will soon pile in, prices will drop, and eventually the entire market will be wiped out by the next technological breakthrough.