Mistake 1: “Your customers are reasonable.” People are more likely to be emotional, insecure, stubborn, fearful, distant and ridiculous, than rational. “Being reasonable” really depends on you, your view of how things should work and how you think your customers should act. To get these …

Big data. Macro trends. All those fancy info graphics. If you’re General Motors or Samsung or Pepsico, these long term trends matter because you need the masses. But if you’re like most of us — smaller, local Kansas City businesses — you don’t need tens …

Sure you can build your business on faster (think QuikTrip and how quickly they check you out), or cheaper (like Cargo Largo). That works right up until someone comes along who’s even faster or cheaper. Everyone else has to build trust.

It’s simple really. Most advertising talks about the client, the product or to the cleverness of the ad agency. As a customer who only really cares about my own needs, that (like most advertising) is easy to ignore. There is a really simple fix:

Want to generate sales from your small business website? Keep It Simple Sister. Don’t sweat the geek-speak. Don’t get caught up in all the bells and whistles and shopping carts (and expense). Forget about programming. All you need are these five pages:

Small space ads. :15 second tv spots. Outdoor billboards. Twitter posts. The secret to impactful advertising is to work small. Working small distills your thinking down to one single most important, relevant and actionable idea. So that’s where all of our creative starts – with one …

Overwhelming your prospective customers with data, and bullet points in an attempt to answer every possible question is easy. Oh, it feels like you’re doing a lot of work, but all you’re really doing is stating the obvious – and the obvious is quickly forgotten.

Google is our Yellow Pages. It’s our encyclopedia. It’s our world, national and local news source. If you want to be found, you want to be found on Google. The fastest, cheapest and easiest way to find yourself on the first page of a Google …

I love featuring my clients in their own ads. They’re so imperfect, so not-ready-for-primetime and yes, sometimes even grating. But they’re real. As a small business in Kansas City, your ads are up against a blur of high-dollar production values and professional talent. The best …

First it was Walmart and the big Box Stores. Then you had to compete with Amazon.com and free shipping. Now, thanks to internet-enabled smartphones your local business in a price battle with every retailer in the world. It’s called “Price Transparency” and it’s turning your …