Excellent article on how proper marketing starts with a good strategy. Read here.
Major learning point: Here’s what you need to come up with a decent marketing strategy:
-
Figure out what
you want to accomplish. In marketing, this is usually described as the change
you want in the marketplace?in buying habits, distribution methodologies, or whatever
the strategic goals dictate. To achieve this, it is often necessary to change market
perceptions and attitudes. That’s where advertising, marketing and public relations
come in. -
Figure
out what you have to do to make what you want to accomplish happen. It’s
easy enough to run an ad or produce a brochure and hope something good happens as
a result. But unless that ad or brochure is specifically targeted toward bringing
about a desired change in the marketplace, results are a hit-or-miss proposition or,
at best, only temporary. -
Do
what you have to do to make what you want to accomplish happen. Finally,
it is necessary to execute the strategy, which requires resources in terms of both
time and money, and there is seldom enough of either to do everything well. That’s
why it’s important to be able to prioritize, to apply adequate resources to the most
critical tasks to achieve the necessary results. Otherwise, it’s easy to get caught
in the trap of trying to do so many things that nothing gets down well, and there
are no real results to point to, despite significant expenditures and an abundance
of effort. Prioritization and the application of resources is a formula that
has proven successful for countless clients over the years.
Read the whole thing here