You have been in the marketing world long enough to know about the concept of personas. These semi-fictional portraits of your best customer you are marketing to can help you write more inspired messaging as well as present this information in a way your ideal audience likes to see it. However, personas are only as good as the work that goes into creating them. An imagined persona with loose demographic information doesn’t give you the information you need to make a targeted marketing strategy. Instead, thorough research, detailed interviews and careful analysis of real data about your existing customers are essential to creating a persona that works for your business.

Wouldn’t it be great if all your customers were your best customers? No matter what industry you’re in, you probably have those potential clients and customers that your sales team loves to sell to and others that are … much harder for your sales team to see eye-to-eye with. By creating an ideal client profile, you can identify the type of person who tends to buy and be satisfied with your product.

Whether your business is a handful of people or hundreds, you have company data that is in a constant state of being updated, changed, or deleted in different computer systems, spreadsheets, and software packages. No wonder discrepancies occur and mistakes are made when information you thought was correct isn’t.

It’s never been so important to harness all company data or “digital knowledge,” clean it up, and maintain that cleanliness. It’s a big, important job, especially when it comes to sharing company information online. And incorrect information that’s already posted online also needs to be dealt with if your company wants to improve SEO rankings and keep up with the competition. If digital knowledge management isn’t on your radar, it should be. Here are five compelling reasons why: