My friend Gene called me on my home phone to ask for my business phone number, in order to pass it along to a potential customer. Gene is one of the brightest, more insightful people I know, and he has a website for his own business. But it did not occur to him to simply give the potential customer my web address.

Lesson learned: Not everyone in my world is Internet savvy. Levels of experience dip and sway from people who use email and do nothing else on line;  who surf but don’t bookmark;  who buy online but don’t know how …

You have a good well designed website, one that serves as a resource to all its visitors (clients, vendors, prospects, and employees alike). You produce regular articles, either for your blog or newsletter. You have a valuable product or service that you want to share and a unique selling proposition. Now you just need to figure out how to direct people to your site – and not just any people, but those who will produce a good return on your investment.

That means knowing your audience and targeting your outreach. How can you spread your content to …

As we run our businesses we are seeking to keep our competitive advantage and push the potential of our businesses farther. One simple best practice that has the greatest return is ‘know your audience.’ Simple as it sounds, it is one of the most frequently neglected marketing tools.

1,2,3 Easy. Capture your existing client data. Track your marketing and sales communication activities. Analyze the client data to make smarter business choices. Customize your approach to achieve more powerful results. Sounds like more work than the return. Where does it payoff?

Optimize Time. Save money by optimizing the use …

You did your homework of understanding your audience when planning your site. You looked at the demographics and at the needs of each audience that might end up browsing your pages: existing clients, prospects, partners, and internal staff. You organized your content to match those needs and came up with a suitable navigation menu. You even paid attention to their screen resolutions and most used browser versions. Is that it?

How about finding out your audience’s online behavior? What sites are these users browsing when they are NOT on your site?

Why would you want to know? Knowing where these visitors “hang out” online …

Most people understand the saying “You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression”. However, it’s not applied to websites so much… and it should. Users get more and more sophisticated with time and have certain expectations of your website. You might be an expert at what you do, but are you communicating that on your site? Better yet, are you showing without telling?

That is the key. You want to show your expertise without having to tell users how great you are. This is done through a combination of engaging design, up-to-date good content, and good programming to …