Small businesses and nonprofits need a clear understanding of their goals before they spend money and time on marketing. They should be able to answer the question, "What does success look like?" before they start cutting checks. Sometimes reflection is in order to arrive at the answer, but it's time well spent. It's what you must know before you spend your dough.

“Small Business, Big Impact” is a practical, action-oriented guide for small businesses and nonprofits that want to do more with less. It offers straightforward advice to help business owners and nonprofits clarify their marketing goals, build their brand presence, prioritize customer needs, and embrace continual improvement.

Fascination with the latest, greatest thing and impatience with implementation are common in marketing circles. However, a commitment to methodically achieving sustainable goals is more likely to result in success.

It’s often said that you should never meet your heroes. Inevitably, when we get close enough, we find that they disappoint. But perhaps we shouldn’t place them on pedestals they were never willingly climb upon. And what if the real heroes were a lot closer than we think?

I’m not an easy audience member to win over. As a card-carrying member of Generation X, I’m always on the lookout for posers, narcissists and empty suits. But Joel Goldberg, a Royals reporter, author and speaker, caused me to (temporarily) trash my cynical paradigm with his presentation on Building Trust. How did he convert me?

This sign is the gold standard in notices about public facilities. It addresses the problem in a forthright but humorous way and redirects shoppers to an alternative method of transportation. It treats people like … well, people! So often these communiques read like terse bureaucratic notes from a cranky Nanny. Good show Network Rail!

There’s a great deal of hand wringing as well as hype about AI. Here’s what I have found works, and doesn’t, in my role as a marketer.

It’s shocking how often marketers don’t use their secret weapon. And what is that? Storytelling. But not just any story. As brand communicators we must be telling dynamic stories about how our products and services solve thorny problems for real people. No matter our industry, people’s problems are real. But instead of writing a real-life page turner, brands usually devolve into sharing indecipherable corporate gobbledygook that no one will ever read. Ready for a change?

Never blindly delegate or spend your way out of critical decisions about promoting your business.

Dr. Dan Erickson invested in life’s most valuable asset: people.

Minimize the grind. Begin with the end in mind.

Your digital video presence creates a first impression. Is it a good one? It can be.

Instead of throwing it over the wall, invite collaboration.

Instead, communicate more precisely and effectively by choosing the right word.

This Italian original serves cookies, pastries, cannoli and … need I go on?

Why are job opening descriptions so unbelievably lame?

Invest most fully in marketing tools that can’t be ripped out from under you.

This public education campaign raised funds and shared the story of an arrest stemming from advanced surveillance techniques.

It’s usually centered around silver-haired people playing golf. Is that all there is?

Calling employees heroes is fine … if you treat them as such.