We had a great seminar at my office yesterday (details on the next one coming soon.)

A revelation for everyone there came near the end, when we were reviewing everyone’s website. I started each review with a few questions.

“Why did you build this page? What are you trying to accomplish? Who comes? Where do you want them to click? How do you know if the page is working? What do you measure?”

The real progress for most people came just in thinking about how they were going to answer the questions. Toward the end, though, one marketer showed us his site. He wanted the group’s advice on how to improve it. “Improve it to do what?” I asked him?

He didn’t know. He just wanted to make it better. “I haven’t updated it in a few years. How do I make it better?” He was looking for tactics, then he was going to invent a strategy to match. After a few seconds, he realized exactly what he was saying. Of course our tactics wouldn’t solve his problem because he didn’t know what his problem was!

Simple moral: if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?