It has been 20 years since I began writing this “Karrh on Marketing” column for Arkansas Business and plenty of acknowledgement is in order. For me, this overriding emotion is gratitude.

It’s all too easy to rely upon good intentions, to-do lists or our memory in an attempt to be timely.

It makes sense to examine whether the nature of word-of-mouth has been altered after most mouths have been behind masks during the past 12 months.

When we come to the close of 2021, and you review your business successes, I suspect you will attribute that success to having done a few important things well.

Business leaders across our state — and the U.S. — are now looking ahead to 2021. Has there ever been a time when strategies and forecasts have felt more tenuous?

There is pressure to recover quickly in our businesses — but we can’t be tone-deaf or pushy.

Is it time for a change in your business message? Depending on the research you follow and the experiences of other organizations, you could be led to different conclusions.

Now that you have set your 2020 growth plans for the business, it’s time to set to work achieving them.

The divide between sales and marketing — including both the people involved and their activities — has seemingly been around since the Hatfields and McCoys began feuding.

As a practical business matter, if the professionalism bar is being lowered in many respects, then this topic represents a path for professionals and organizations to stand out.

Where are you getting fresh ideas for your business? Are you better off looking within your industry, or outside of it?

When you think about Nike, which phrases or messages come to mind? How about “His shoe broke”? That one came from Barack Obama, in a spontaneous moment while in the crowd watching a basketball game.

We can all probably ask more — and more effectively — in our businesses and communities.

Podcasting seems to have reached a kind of early adolescence as a new medium.

In order to meet new expectations, I’m finding that marketing leaders are necessarily shedding old assumptions and identities. As a former chief marketing officer and now adviser, I have dealt with this metamorphosis firsthand.

Are there words that you should be including in your messages and customer conversations? The answer for your business might be “yes.”

Given the truth that CEOs are ultimately responsible for the growth of the enterprise, one detail stands out: “Most of our CEOs were dismayed to discover how little time they spent with their customers — just 3% on average.”

There is much, much more to marketing — even to just the communications component of marketing — than a catchy slogan that sticks in consumers’ brains. Nevertheless, that could be a pretty strong foundation in our increasingly noisy world.

In a time when almost everything seems hyperpolitical, is it any surprise that business marketing is increasingly pulled in too?

While you ponder Thin Mints or Tagalongs, also consider the marketing and sales strategies used by the all-time record-setting Girl Scout cookie seller.