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

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 >

As you let your fingers do the walking around the world wide web, you’re likely to notice many similarities across B2B marketing websites. Some accomplish their goals better than others, and some are simply dreadful, but many share the same attributes and pages. As you consider these sites – and your own – the question you should…MORE >

It’s tempting to think of usability and marketing effectiveness as two different things in that same way that many marketers think of graphic design as somehow less important than their marketing. Of course, great visual design is hugely important to the effectiveness of any marketing. The same can be said of usability. That’s not surprising,…MORE >

From the archives this week, one of our most popular posts. It’s pretty timeless material, from the fear of even thinking about the firehose of data that Google Analytics sprays at you to the importance of understanding how your audience is consuming and engaging with your content. (And which content they prefer.) If you do…MORE >

In order for your website to work as a digital marketing tool, it has to work, period. Keeping your site secure is critical to its marketing performance. Here are our top tips for keeping the bad guys at bay and your website performing smoothly. Regular Updates and Maintenance The single most important step you can…MORE >

Anymore than it used to. [ba dum bum] You might consider my paraphrasing of an oldie-but-a-goodie funny, or you might think it’s a “dad joke.” Either way, the truth is that neither digital nor traditional marketing work if done poorly. But … considering the enormous sums poured into both traditional and digital marketing by large…MORE >