Don’t be held captive to short-term ROI. Free your brand.
Late last week, I was fortunate enough to be in the lobbies of each of these four institutions: Harvard Business Review, The Salvation Army, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Liberty Medical. Each is a stalwart business and their missions smack you in the face when you walk in the door. In their lobbies, I could feel the energy. Better said, lobbies are where the brand meets the customer, real and prospective. These four are amongst the most successful brand direct marketers in their categories because they intuitively and actively drive growth through discipline and iteration. But, more, they believe that brand direct marketing is the ‘Engine that Could’ (and does): it drives and shapes perception based on how people respond and buy. Offers, creative, pricing, terms, messaging evolve as performance reveals. Brand awareness and a brand’s performance are directly connected.
Last week was a busy one in the search world. 
Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that provides diagnostic reports and tools for improving a site’s visibility on Google and other search engines. While it focuses on technical aspects of search engine crawling and is aimed at webmasters and SEO practitioners, it also contains several features and reports of particular interest to online marketers. Listed below are three features of