"These are perilous economic times" is the incessant media mantra. Indeed, as a country, we are experiencing a perfect economic storm. In this very grim environment, a young, first-term, African-American senator from Illinois had the chutzpah to strategically position and conceptually frame his long-shot run to the White House with the audacity of hope. And he won by a landslide -- so maybe there's something to this hope thing. Hope is defined by Webster's like this: 1) to desire with expectation of obtainment; 2) to expect with confidence. The obvious lesson for marketers and media, along with the folks in …

It's deceptive, really. That lowly toll-free number at the top of your SEM landing site or page. Sure, people call it; you capture leads and on a good day even make some sales. You figure some of those leads and sales are a result of your hard-fought SEM campaign. But how many? How many phone leads can you really attribute directly to your paid SEM efforts versus organic activity, or worse, other offline media traffic that happens to be funneling into the same location? The answer is quite simple. And it requires only a nominal amount of IT attention to …