A critical bit of data when thinking about how to grow your business is acquisition cost: the price of attracting a new customer.  Once you know how much it costs to get each customer, you can set an ad budget complete with milestones about how many new customers your budget should get you.

As you have heard time and time again, we (as an agency) pride ourselves on delivering measurable results- we drive people to our clients' businesses.  But that's only half the battle.  

Conventional wisdom says that every business must have a website and that website better be great.  But there is another way.

You know you need social but how much is too much?  If you are trying to post, engage, comment, retweet and follow on every social platform it's tough to do a great job on any of them. 

It is a golden age of invention and every entrepreneur wants to come up with something big; something that will change everything; something that will make them ridiculously rich.  And, some will.  

Sales and marketing are very different disciplines and both are worthwhile but without one, it's hard to do the other.  Even the best sales person, someone who can close virtually any prospect, needs tools to reach those prospects. In fact, the better you are at selling, the MORE you should develop your marketing. 

In an era where marketing is everywhere, it's hard to stand out. Every time you up your ad game, the competition does too.  What your customers really want is...

If you've been reading these blog posts for a while you know I sometimes get carried away and write more than a marketing 'tip'.  Maybe the point can be made more effectively with fewer words. In fact, I was recently asked if I was paid by the word....

We all know people who post to social with wild abandon.  Many (most?) also know about under-posting- any excuse to not deal with concocting a clever post.  How often you post to your business social pages is not only measured numerically. Success depends entirely on what you post and the value of those posts to your clients/customers/audience.  Quality matters as much or more than quantity and should be your starting point.  

There was a time, not too long ago, when you would have been considered a fool if you launched a website with any top level domain other than .com (.info, .org or .net for example).  In those days even established companies were adding .com to their names to jump on the bandwagon (One study found that just adding .com to your company name without making any other change increased stock prices by 74% on average!). 

One of the buzzwords of the moment is ‘Growth Hacking’.  It’s thrown around in casual conversation, at board meetings and even on the local news. But what does it really mean?  Is it some kind of secret sauce or magical key to success? Or is it snake oil, pitched and sold by tech savvy hucksters looking to make a quick buck?  Unfortunately...  

Ever notice that Facebook pages for big companies look better than pages for small businesses?  Why is that? Everyone has access to the same resources and Facebook does not allow for crazy customization (remember MySpace!?).  Design is the difference and it is a much lower bar than you might imagine.  

You've no doubt heard the adage about how you can't change what you don't test.  Well, good news! There are tons of great tools (many free) to help you gather data and test.  If you are not using these tools, you are likely working harder than you need to and making less money than you might.  

Instagram started as a great way to showcase elaborate meals and over the top vacations but has grown into a valuable marketing channel for all sorts of businesses.  Companies with visually appealing products (fashion, design, real estate, etc) use it to showcase products and services.  Non-visual businesses (lawyers, coaches, consultants) use it to build their brand and stay top of mind with clients.  Some even post...