Over the weekend, we adopted a six month old Bernese Mountain Dog puppy. He’s sweet and precious and a bundle of joy, but my first observation as a new puppy mom is there is a lot of crushing of unbridled enthusiasm taking place; much boundary setting and use of restraining words such as “stay” and “no” in […]
Risking More Than you Gain in the Lead Generation Game
There is no shortage of shady practices across the internet but I’m always surprised when well-known, reputable brands engage in questionable, somewhat deceptive practices to improve lead generation and customer retention numbers. These practices aren’t necessarily unethical; certainly not illegal. But basically, they’ve resorted to “tricks” to pull unsuspecting consumers into their web, making it hard for […]
Reverse Engineer the Brand Story With an Obituary
I’m not trying to be morbid here but when I heard Nancy Reagan’s tributes last month after she died, I wondered why it is we wait to let someone else write our obituary after we’re gone. I didn’t know that much about Mrs. Reagan; I’ll be honest. Ronald Reagan was president during the years I […]
Measure the Effectiveness of Print and Offline Campaigns
See that picture? That’s a phone. Some people still use it. They look at a print ad, pick up the phone or just walk into a location and make a purchase. And while those of us in digital marketing like to think everyone makes all their purchase decisions online and therefore, track-able, we all know […]
Is Inbound Marketing a Fad?
I have been having technical difficulty with analytics for a client. By way of a Google search, I learned about self-referral issues and that one of the causes is incorrect cross domain tracking. (Stick with me, you don’t have to know what any of this is; I didn’t.) The article, authored by an analytics firm, outlined step by step solutions based […]
How to Measure Inbound Marketing Efforts
On average, we conduct 12 billion searches per month on the web in the United States. (Comscore, July 2014) *Source That’s 400 million searches per day. Most of these searches are performed by people like you and me looking for a solution to a problem or need, asking a search engine or a social network where […]
The Key to Crisis Messaging: Keep it simple
Last month, our much beloved no-kill animal shelter had an outbreak of canine distemper and needed communications help. They are not a client, but the executive director contacted me, and, feeling like Wonder Woman, I immediately cleared my calendar and accepted the mission. It’s not often I get to help save the puppies! The situation had many […]
Strategy vs Tactics: Fix The Mistake Many Marketers Make
The other night I watched this episode of The Profit where Marcus Lemonis works with the mom and pop owners of Shuler’s BBQ to scale the business. It is a classic “entrepreneur gets sucked into business” and a scenario many of us grapple with every day. In one scene, Marcus sits down with the potential general manager – a guy […]
What To Look For In Google Analytics
Are you looking at your analytics regularly? And I mean weekly if not daily? More importantly, When you look at them, do you know what to look for and what kind of action to take? Do you know what to ignore and how to keep the data stream manageable so you don’t spiral into analysis […]
The Art of Productive Daydreaming
It might not be terribly smart of me to confess it’s August and I’ve had a hard time getting my head into work. (Some of you are my clients, after all, and perhaps that’s not very comforting to hear.) I spent much of Wednesday in airports and airplanes; something I’ve always enjoyed because I get a […]