Spring is a’coming to West Michigan and we’re feeling pretty good about this weekend. It should be a great chance to spend some time outdoors and soak up some much-needed vitamin D!

But first, we have a solid roundup of Our Favorite Headlines to end your week. This week, we’re fighting some common misconceptions: both about the future of marketing, and about food. We’ll let each article do the talking, so check them out below.

The Takeaway: You’ve gone big and sprung for a fully-integrated campaign: direct mail, email, social media – the whole kit and caboodle. The design is eye-catching. The copy is compelling. And yet, the phones aren’t ringing and the orders haven’t started rolling in.

There are two ways this campaign could have gone wrong: a misidentified target audience or, more likely, a weak offer. Offers can be a tricky thing, especially when you’re uncertain of the value you’re able to provide your customers. So whether you offer services for other businesses or sell consumer goods, use this blog post as a guide for crafting high-value, effective offers in your marketing. There’s even a free downloadable poster to hang by your desk!

The Takeaway: “Influencer marketing” will likely be one of the biggest buzzwords of 2018. But as with all buzzwords, marketers should turn a critical eye toward the channel and how it actually contributes to growth. Most importantly, we need to ensure that our understanding of influencer marketing goes beyond the realm of online influencers, whose clout is dependent on, well, the internet. Instead, we should focus on authentic influencer marketing in the form of word-of-mouth.

The Takeaway: After a year of painful brand missteps, it’s clear that empathy is a skill that’s desperately needed in marketing departments and agencies everywhere. Empathy means setting aside your preconceived notions about what you customers want and really putting yourself in their shoes – including during the product development, branding, messaging, and sales processes. Beyond avoiding embarrassment and backlash, the right amount of empathy can help you build lasting relationships with your customers by getting to the heart of what they want and need from your brand.

The Takeaway: If reading this headline made you want to cry, you’re not alone… Walking down the aisles at the grocery store can be a bit befuddling these days. It’s hard to identify which foods are truly good for you when the labels on nearly every package boast products that are “Organic” or “All-Natural”, or “Low-Fat” and “Zero Calories!” So how does the regular consumer make sense of it all? Here’s a quick guide from the author of the Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? This article only covers a few of the misconceptions but is a great place to start on your way to shopping with confidence.