Sarah owns The Bath Bar, a small bath & lotion store in downtown Kirkland, Washington. She sells a wide range of bath soaps, soaking salts, lotions and gifts.

There are plenty of places to buy bath soaps and lotions around town, including several competing retail locations in your local mall alone.

But Sarah's business is remarkably popular and successful, and her customers are fiercely loyal.

Why? Sarah has great products, and remarkable service. She's a prime example of how great products and even greater service can be your most effective marketing.

Walk into Sarah's store, and you're greeted with a smile and personal service to find exactly what you need. Come back a second time, and Sarah remembers everything you liked from the previous visit, and sometimes even has new products in stock specifically because she thought you would like them.

Need something in a hurry? Call ahead. Sarah will shop for you, process your credit card over the phone, wrap everything up, and bring your package out to your car for you, so you don't have to even worry about a parking spot.

Running late? Just give Sarah a call. She'll keep the store open for you.

Sarah's even been known to take orders directly to customers' homes on her own way home from work.

Sarah does all of this, and much more, not because she read about it in a book, or because she learned it in business school. To Sarah, this is simply what you do for your customers. This level of remarkable service comes natural.

But we all know that this level of service is quite uncommon. Most retail businesses fail to ask our names, let alone remember them, let alone remember what products we like.

Let alone offer to shop for us, bring our order to the car, or stay open late.

Sarah doesn't think about it this way, but she's one of the best marketers at work in retail today. She knows that building a business isn't about advertising, it isn't about flashy gimmicks, and it isn't about doing what the "big guys" do.

It's about serving and delighting your customers with something they can't get anywhere else.

By focusing on great products and even better service, Sarah has created a competitive advantage that few can match.

Is your business this remarkable? Do your customers tell stories as remarkable as those listed above? Are you creating a competitive advantage simply by how you support your products, and how important you make your customers feel?

You may have read by now about Terra Bite, a coffee shop in Kirkland, Washington that charges nothing. That's right. Order your latte, get a muffin, even come back in the afternoon for a cookie or sandwich. You're obligated to pay nothing.

SNL is Back: It's buzzworthy again, and YouTube can prove it. Just check out the viewership metrics for this, this and this, not to mention all the "tribute" copycat videos created by fans.

Email Madness, Baby!: What college basketball can teach us about email marketing (yes, you read that right).

Seven Stations for your Home: Good advice from LifeHack on how to keep your home humming along as efficiently as your office.

Geek to Live: Finally, a Web site that doesn't promote technology for technology's sake. Find the right tools that help you get stuff done faster/better/cheaper, then get out and enjoy life!

Going Home: Great article by Web Worker Daily about how to effectively transition from "work mode" to "home mode" each day.

What Should I Say?: Social advice from the masses. Use at your own risk (but it's sure fun to read!).

Please read this fantastic, short article in Fast Company about setting priorities, and establishing appropriate expectations (with yourself and with others) about what you can and can't get done in the time available to you every day.

We all have way too many things to do. Too many things piling up at the office, and too many duties back at home. If we assume it all has to get done, we will never succeed. If we set goals but don't establish the discipline to stick to them and focus only on them, we're still doomed to a life of frustration and self-evaluated failure.

But if we take the time to decide what we really want, and what's really important to us (professionally and personally), we empower and free ourselves to live more satisfied lives.

(Wow, heavy stuff. To laugh again, watch this.)

Some of the best ideas around right now are simply better-executed strategies pulled from somewhere else. They're not necessarily original ideas, just better implementations in a new setting.

Don't believe me? See for yourself.

Go to the bookstore, the nearest newsstand, or even the local supermarket. Find a magazine that you've never read, in an industry or genre you typically don't find interesting.

Take the magazine home, and read it cover to cover. Read everything - the editor's note, the ads, the short up-front briefs, and the back-of-the-book long features.

As you read, write down things that you find interesting. Pay attention to copy strategies from the ads, promotional ideas by sponsors, successful design elements in the magazine overall.

Observe to how the advertisers engage the readers. How the writers engage the readers. How the magazine designers keep readers flipping through to the back cover.

As you observe and take notes, start making analogies between what you see (and experience) directly, and how that might apply these insights in your job, your industry, or your marketing.

My guess is you'll end up with a strong to-do list of fresh, new ideas that are immediately relevant and actionable in your business.

Some of our best breakthroughs aren't necessarily original ideas. They're born out of an experience, a kernel of an idea, a snippet of information pulled from somewhere else.

I believe the best marketers among us are simply the most efficient at identifying those kernels in everything they see, do and experience, identifying bridges between where they find it and what they're presently doing, and then being diligent and focused on testing those ideas in their own environment.

Happy Hour is 9 to 5: Worth reading through this free online book on how to love your job, love your life, and kick butt at work.

Hit the ground running: Have you ever been this prepared for a job interview? Kinda takes things to a new level...

You know you're a blogger when...: Check out Brad Inman's "10 Characteristics of a Good Blogger." How many describe you?

How's your G-Cred?: Does Google know who you are? And does it like you?

zefrank on procrastination: Sound at all familiar?

What coffee says about your company: Interesting analysis published recently in the Financial Times. Do you help your employees and team members gather and collaborate, or do you separate them? Is your coffee pot this prophetic?

Chief Forgiveness Officer: That's what Southwest Airlines just hired. What do you think of his role?

We all have detractors. The best products don't work for everyone. And even companies with the best customer service deal regularly with angry customers.

Too often, however, our feelings about the person complaining get in the way of how seriously we should take their complaint.

Put another way: ignore the critic, embrace the criticism.

Even irrational complaints are typically rooted in something real, something that's facing and frustrating many more customers who haven't spoken up. If you take the easy path, dismissing both the critic and the criticism, you're likely passing up an opportunity to address a very real customer issue, something that could be keeping dozens, even hundreds of other customers from being successful and completely satisfied with your product or service.

Critics are not fun to listen to. They can be downright rude. Sometimes they get personal.

But they almost always have a point.

Ignore the critic, embrace the criticism.

Talk really is cheap: This study implies that good relationships and communication with co-workers is more important than compensation.

Mom My Ride: Funny video from Zima, but what's the brand tie-back? Is Zima a soccer-mom drink now?

Jott 2.0: It was cool enough when I could Jott myself, but Jott others? Out of sight!

Start the Conversation!: Check out DiscussThis, and get your customers talking (while you watch!)

Marketing Blog Bracketology: What happens when you mix March Madness with marketing blogs? This (for better or worse). What could you bracketize?

How does your marketing smell?: Don't just think about what your brand says and looks like. Involve every emotional and physical sense to communicate your message and brand essence. How does your brand smell and taste? What does it feel like?

My last post about marketing that's not really marketing made me think about a simple exercise that can help all of us focus our attention first on products, services and customer experience - then on how to leverage marketing to accelerate awareness and growth.

Imagine for a moment that you were not allowed to spend a dime on marketing for an entire year. No advertising, no PR, no direct mail, no emails. You could not proactively market your business. You could only invest time, energy, resources and budget into your products, services and customer experience.

You are, in essence, counting on your customers to market and grow your business for you - based on how effective your products and services perform.

How would that change your approach? How would it change how and where you allocate your time and resources each day? How would it change your perspective on how, and where, to invest in current products & services?

How would you do business differently?

Now imagine you had that marketing budget back. Would you need it?

I had coffee this morning with a great marketer who doesn't believe in marketing.

He owns a very successful business in Seattle, the latest of several successful ventures in his career. His disciplined approach about both great storytelling and fanatical customer service demonstrate his understanding of the root causes of customer loyalty and word-of-mouth.

Yet despite the fact that he's clearly a success, and is clearly a great marketer, he doesn't believe that most marketing works.

And he's right.

Traditional marketing, done well, does nothing more than spread the work about great products and services. But if the products and services aren't great, the marketing will never work.

What's more, great products and services usually don't need marketing. Great products and services market themselves, in that they generate intense loyalty among current customers, and the kind of word-of-mouth that naturally generates steady waves of new customers.

Sure, an extra layer of traditionally-defined marketing can often be a catalyst to faster growth. It can mean the difference between 2X growth and 5X growth, simply by accelerating the speed at which people find out about your business.

But if the business isn't good - if the products don't work, don't deliver on marketing promises, or simply are supported by bad service - then all you've done is tell a lot more people that you run a bad business, or deliver a sub-par service.

If your business has slowed, sales are down, or competitors are catching up, marketing may be the answer. But look first to your products. Look to the service you provide to your customers. Make sure you're delivering on the promises you've made. More often than not, your growth path is not in buying an expensive ad campaign, or sending more direct mail. It's in building better, more remarkable experiences for your customers.

In a world where customers more frequently deliver their own marketing messages about your business back to the masses, your best marketing may not be marketing at all.