I hear this question and see it posted on web sites all the time. The ensuing discussion typically revolves around various tools and tactics that can be used in a marketing campaign – everything from jingle generators, to online advertising, to good old word of mouth.
Any one of these tactics may end up being successful, but it depends – and that’s the problem. Too often we look at a tool as the answer without first developing a marketing strategy. Simply put, your marketing strategy is the combination of your Ideal Customer profile and your Core Message.
I find that this idea of starting from a strategy makes sense to people on an intellectual level, but often gets short shrift at implementation time. It’s easier to skip over the hard, somewhat abstract, work of fully developing a strategy and jump right into “doing something”.
But in order to successfully implement a particular tactic, we must answer several questions – here are a few:
- Who should I talk to?
- What should I say?
- What should I offer?
- Where should I say it?
If you have a well developed strategy, these questions are easy to answer. When you don’t, something like this happens:
- You make a draft
- You ask a couple people if they like it (without thought to whether or not they fit your ideal customer profile)
- You try it once
- You wait
- You get frustrated because you spent a lot of money and “marketing doesn’t work”.
Spend some time working on marketing strategy and you will create more successful marketing campaigns.
