Can you hear the drums?

That slowly growing backbeat that you hear in the distance is the growing chorus of our customers, new joining with the old, voices combining to make a melody describing the business environment--and what they need most to cope with it/maximize net from it. For the last 4 months, one overreaching theme has been getting louder and clearer: marketing. Our retailers and service firms are max'ing out their internal, operational efficiencies and need to get more bang for their marketing buck. Spending $0.75 per flat postcard mailer to 10,000 potential customers with no way to gauge the ROI doesn't cut it anymore.
Where we'd originally expected a significant portion of our monthly revenue streams coming in from management fees, we're now seeing a rapid increase in revenues from eMarketing campaigns and customer intelligence reports/usage. Plus, we've had customers literally fall into our laps as a result of unplanned, casual conversations with local business owners, discussing their marketing and advertising strategies. This fits like a glove with our ongoing Marketing and Customer Analysis upgrades (the ones that we mapped out last summer).
The spanner in the works is defining the pricing pressure points that provide our customers with cost-effective solutions. The marketing systems are transitioning from a smaller, service/retail-support system into a main, revenue generating division. Because our marketing systems are part of our 'Special Sauce'--something that isn't easily replicable by our competitors at our price range--we can reasonably expect that transition to be successful and to not be holding an empty bag at the end of the next 12 months.

Within the next 3 weeks, we will complete our first truly integrated Community--linking customers to retailers to suppliers. Pizza party for the sales and technical divisions!