All too often, business owners, executives and marketing professionals take the leap into a new marketing tactic without any overarching, company-wide marketing strategy or plan. This is like jumping from a plane at 30,000 feet without a parachute. Starting marketing tactics without a strong strategy has a significant impact, resulting in: marginal returns, uncertainty regarding program continuity and little to no integration with other aspects of your marketing program.
Many business owners or marketing professionals get caught up in this ongoing dilemma: they’re using the tools they’ve heard work well in engaging prospects (such as email marketing or social media), but can’t make them work for their businesses.
Why? As Sun Tzu stated in his classic book The Art of War, “strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” If you don’t define your company’s marketing objectives and adequately plan for them, you ensure that your chances of realizing your goals are slim.
Before you take the leap and start any new marketing tactic, take the extra time to create a long-term marketing plan. Prepare a list of objectives, a timeline, action items for success, an editorial calendar and some specific quantitative expectations for the new program.
Now you have a specific set of expectations, a detailed implementation plan and a calendar for success. This gives you milestones to measure the program’s performance, make adjustments and, ultimately, decide if each tactic was successful or not when analyzing overall performance. Once you make a marketing strategy part of your company's efforts, you're well on your way to making your company remarkable through Reality Marketing!
Start Today – Take a hard look at your marketing tactics. Did you take a leap without any careful planning first and are now struggling to see measurable success? If so, it’s time for a marketing plan. Create a list of your objectives and what you are going to use to achieve them BEFORE implementing anything new! Once you do, then go back and take a look at your marketing strategy regularly to make sure you’re on track.
Square 2 Marketing - Leading the Reality Marketing Revolution!
Posted By Author Mike Lieberman, CEO and Chief Revenue Scientist
Mike is the CEO and Chief Revenue Scientist at Square 2. He is passionate about helping people turn their ordinary businesses into businesses people talk about. For more than 25 years, Mike has been working hand-in-hand with CEOs and marketing and sales executives to help them create strategic revenue growth plans, compelling marketing strategies and remarkable sales processes that shorten the sales cycle and increase close rates.
