Similar to:  “I need to reach too many different types of people for buyer personas to work” or “Let’s fix my buyer personas after I get this (fill in the blank) marketing activity done.”

Your message or offer has to have a clearly identified target in order for your marketing to be effective. Or said differently, “anyone” or “everyone” automatically qualifies as “no target” and hence, attracts nobody.

You have this great client or customer. They would make a fabulous case study and they have already given you a nice short testimonial quote. They love you and your product or service. They compliment you all the time. And you can never get to write anything down, or even to give you time to work with them to develop the case study story. Because they are too busy.

March Madness has become a US cultural phenomenon for groups of (mostly) men in office pools around the country. Sometimes the outcomes are predictable, but in the NCAA tournament, nothing is ever 100% certain. Just like most marketing tactics.

Quick story for today’s post. I have had the privilege of being a guest or part time mentor for a entrepreneur incubator for the last couple of years. Every few months I get the opportunity to interface with some incredibly bright, creative and energetic folks launching the next great thing. Sometimes in tech, sometime in retail, sometimes in education. You never know what will come next.

One of the things I have noticed in all the one-on-one conversations I have with these teams is their need for information, and their failure to see one of the best sources of it, right in their grasp. It’s their customers!

Thought for a day:

Editor’s note… This post is from Joe Reyes, and outstanding student intern we have had working with us since November of last year. I asked Joe to share his thoughts on how college is preparing him for real-world marketing.

In a previous blog post, “Tales From the Crypt” You learned all about the different problems and miscommunications that can arise when embarking on a website design or re-design process. In this post, I will give you some advice from the  designer’s point of view, of some of the things you should discuss with the person you hire before you begin the project implementation.

Needless to say, communication is key. Here are 5 things to discuss with your designer before embarking on the project:

Yes, that title is a bit dark and gloomy. And for many people, managing the creation and launch of a new website for their company feels like the cold hand of death is reaching out for them.

Increasing the conversions from your website can be as simple as making sure you have the right number of fields for the data and types of leads you are trying to get.  This infographic from Lisa Margetis at at Singlehop does a really nice job of showing the stats.