How-to guides, worksheets, and strategies and tactics to help you map out your marketing. Plus the odd philosophical musing on the digital world.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” One of the traps I find myself fighting hard to keep from falling into – over and over – is allowing the urgent to push aside the important. Nowhere is this more difficult to counteract (for me) than the inbox. Responding immediately…MORE >

It takes a lot of thought to organize a multi-page marketing message so that it appeals to the general audience that might show up at the home page answer the critical questions for each of a number of different audience segments attracts and converts those audience segments via organic search, PPC advertising, and other means…MORE >

B2B marketing continues to evolve from the stuffy, inward-facing efforts of yesteryear to the more modern approach that puts the client front and center. Along with that change comes a change in voice, too. Less formal, more friendly and much more cognizant of the idea that any buying and selling that happens, even in a…MORE >

After 23 years in digital marketing – last month was our anniversary! – we’ve seen and heard a lot. Like the “content is king” mantra alluded to in the headline above. And we’ve heard just about every possible reason from clients for why they want to build or update a website. Some have wanted to…MORE >

There is real digital marketing value to a well-constructed About Us page on your website. Too often, though, marketers pay short shrift to the impact this content can have. I’ve written in the past about errors and lost opportunities related to the About Us page(s) on your website. So I was excited to see an article…MORE >

Although we do technical work – hard not to when you’re building websites, developing email campaigns, and doing search engine optimization – our audience (that’s you!) is mostly made up of marketers. And while there are exceptions, most of you don’t want to dig too deeply into the technologies that deliver your marketing magic. Your eyes glaze…MORE >

It’s a cliché to talk about the marketing mistake of asking for your prospect’s hand in marriage on your first date. And most of us don’t make that mistake anymore, if we ever did. That doesn’t mean we as content marketers aren’t sometimes guilty of diving too deep, too fast. And often our prospects aren’t…MORE >

“Does that really work?” Prospective clients occasionally ask us, in very blunt language, whether digital marketing really works. In particular, they want to know whether content marketing works. Often, they have first-hand experience to the contrary and are doubtful of our recommendations. It can be hard to find a diplomatic way to say, “Well, it…MORE >

There’s no shortage of big-picture questions we can ask ourselves as digital marketers when it comes to conversion optimization on our websites. There are also a more-than-fair number of details to be addressed. How to best build the forms on your website is one of them. Here are some ideas. The goal of your form…MORE >