People sometimes say they have to “sleep on it” before making an important decision. They seem to solve their big problems while sleeping and dreaming.

Consider this: If you can incorporate real experiences into your dreams, can you also use your dreaming imagination to create content for your ad writing or for your website? Hans Christian Andersen used his vivid imagination to spin the stories of his greatest embarrassments and disappointments. The results have become some of the most popular stories of the last two hundred years.

In his article, The Real Ichabod Crane, Roy H. Williams explains the background behind the famous stories of “The Little Mermaid,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and “The Ugly Duckling.”

Your dreams could provide the fuel that your marketing platform requires. Perhaps you should sleep on it. Sweet dreams.

That will depend on whether your site’s purpose is to create sales or to create credibility. If it’s a credibility source you want, you’re likely to design your site to resemble a brochure. If you want to use your website to create sales as an e-commerce site, people will be coming in search of a particular item. Bypassing the home page and sending them to a specific landing page only makes sense – it cuts down on the number of clicks to get to that sought-after response, “I’ll take it.”

In his article, Create Landing Pages that Convert, Bryan Eisenberg looks at the creation of specific landing pages and the way they affect conversion rates.

Landing page principles aren’t limited to direct sales, however. You can use these techniques to study alternate offers and to conduct client surveys or to make other market analyses. Your tests will in large part be invisible to your competitors, who may remain puzzled about how you do it when your marketing platform and your sales keep growing.

You can’t avoid frostbite by rubbing snow on the exposed skin. Applying snow will only make the frostbite worse. (Don’t try this at home). And there’s no evidence that if you sing before breakfast you’ll cry before bedtime.

Grandma was smart in some things, and totally off base in others. Then again, some science doesn’t hold up when closely examined.

In his article, Science Wisdom and Common Sense—Foolish Things We Believe, Roy H. Williams debunks some well-known scientific statements. Taste buds are evenly distributed across the tongue, for instance, not grouped in specific places on the tongue. And what percentage of your brain cells do you use while awake? If you think it’s 10 percent, like most folks do, then you’re only using 1 percent of your smarts!

When you research your statements before publishing them, it’s that much easier to build a credible marketing platform.

What do you do when your career opportunities would require you to raise your children in an environment you don’t approve of? This is a classic example of values conflict.

The good news is that each of us has a set of core values (consider them your personal principles) that we never subordinate. In his article, Do You Have a Sword in the Stone?, Roy H. Williams, marketing guru, discusses the importance of values, clearly defined.

Have you defined your values? Do you have any conflicts?

Your marketing platform incorporates the things you’re known for within your prospective audience. When they hear your name or your company name, do they know what you stand for?

In his article, Create Landing Pages that Convert, Bryan Eisenberg looks at the creation of specific landing pages and the way they affect conversion rates.

Landing page principles aren’t limited to direct sales, however. Use these techniques to study alternate offers and to conduct client surveys or other market analyses. Your tests will in large part be invisible to your competitors, who may remain puzzled about how you do it when your marketing platform and your sales keep growing.

The baby boomers generation was defined by the Cold War, the King and Kennedy assassinations, and the Vietnam war. They value self-fulfillment. An advertising campaign that defined this generation was Coke’s “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”

The Gen X’ers lived through Watergate, AIDS, and the Iran hostage crisis. Gen X was turned off by phoniness. Their definitive campaign was Nike’s, “Just do it.”

Generation Y saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the beginning of the Internet, Nickelodeon, and the collapse of the World Trade Center. This generation accepts affluence as their birthright. Any Old Navy ad sums up generation Y.

In his article, Two Ways of Looking at the Truth, Roy H. Williams suggests that it’s the differences in values that motivate generational appeals. Which generation does your marketing platform appeal to? Are you sure?

Roy H. Williams is a proponent of the power of visualization. “You carry the tool of self-improvement with you everywhere you go. It’s a thing called Choice,” he notes, and continues, “Are you willing to make choices consciously that are currently being made unconsciously?” This advice is old. You’ve heard it regularly as “plan your work, work your plan.”

In his article this week, See The Angel?, Roy challenges us to set goals and visualize the outcomes. Whether you’re chiseling away excess marble to reveal the angel hidden inside, or are attempting to grow your marketing platform to critical mass, the first step is to imagine yourself doing it.

Most of the time, your book will be shelved with only the binding showing. Sixty pound paper runs 444 pages per inch. Your 250 page book will give your designer slightly more than half an inch to work with. A good designer will use this space to maximum advantage, making sure your title can be read from ten feet away.

In his article, Your Book Cover, book promotion expert Rick Frishman recommends that authors be involved in cover design. “Submitting suggested cover designs helps publishers more fully understand your vision of your book,” he notes. “It may also awaken them to ideas and possibilities that they hadn’t foreseen.”

It’s your job to be skeptical during the “courtship” phase of your relationship. PR firms will drop names and claim responsibility of positive stories run about the clients in their portfolios, as they should. You’ll want to clarify and verify their involvement in such success stories. As any journalist can attest, PR people don’t create news. But, ideally, the company or individual you choose will have great contacts with the media.

In his article, Interviewing and Hiring Your PR Firm, Rick Frishman offers a comprehensive checklist of appropriate questions for interviewing PR professionals, including such gems as, “What don’t you do well?” and “What can I do if you don’t deliver the results you’re promising?” Follow their guidelines for a better first-book promotion project.

Some of the difference is a matter of selective perception, and the remainder of the difference is in how we describe the experience. Because the words we’ve chosen to express the experience are different from each other, there’s a case to be made that at least our understanding of experiences vary with our points of view.

This is Roy H. Williams’ topic for this week in his article, Are You Normal? Roy says misunderstandings in communication frequently are the result of poor agreement on the definitions of words themselves. It’s important to our communications, and to the growth of our marketing platforms, that those with whom we communicate understand the intended meanings of our messages.