Do it right and you can convert more leads. Do it wrong and your customer gets the water torture.

Drip marketing is the rather inelegant term for a marketing campaign that relies on repeated contact, or “touches,” with a potential customer.

Unlike a leaky faucet, drip marketing is no accident. Successful drip marketing involves a carefully planned and thoughtfully targeted series of communications that will get your message across to customers and keep your company’s name in their minds. As prospects move through the early stages of the sell cycle, drip marketing helps ensure that those potential customers become your actual customers.

If you’re in sales you already know that prospects are not always ready to buy when you’re ready to sell.  Drip Marketing is a term used to describe an automated system that uses emails, newsletters, direct mail and postcards to continually drip out information to your list of prospects and customers.  Developing a strategy for keeping in contact on a continuing basis is what will cause a prospect to buy from you rather than from one of your competitors.

Let’s examine more closely how drip marketing can increase your sales:

1. Build a relationship– Sending out regular messages to your target market allows you to share information about your business and assures the prospect that your relationship with them will not end with the sale.

2. Presell your prospects – Educate them and help them do their research.  When they’re ready to make a purchase, who do you think they’re going to call?

3. Be persistent–Marketing experts recommend you have some sort of contact every 10-21 days to keep your name foremost in your prospects’ minds.   Think about what information you already have that you could divide up and send to your prospect list.   Brochures, white papers, manuals, FYI emails, etc.

4. Become the expert– Supplying your prospects with evidence that you know what you’re talking about will develop your image as an expert.   What have you accomplished that positions you as a leader in your industry?  Don’t be afraid to self-promote!

5. Be yourself–Studies have shown that prospects are more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and trust rather than a stranger who is selling a similar product.  Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine.  Let them see that you are a real person and that you care.

6. Mix it up– Prospects are bombarded with messages every day.  It’s hard to cut through all the clutter in order to get your message noticed.  Use a combination of email, postcards, direct mail, automated voice messaging, phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, etc.   You never know which of your messages will connect with which prospect.

7. Fix your follow-up failure– An automated marketing database will allow you to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.  Think of all the people you’ve met at networking events and trade shows.  What about referrals and your past customers?  If you’re like most salespeople, you have a pile of business cards on your desk with the intent to follow-up.  Unless you have an automated system, regular follow-up rarely happens and many sales are lost.

8. Target your audience– As you have probably discovered, your target market can be divided into various subsets. Using a database allows you to further segment your market and personalize your messages accordingly. Your prospects will become purchasers if they can relate to your sales message, which will be different for every segment of your target market.

9. Eliminate your slow sales times–Just as people are nearing the end of one marketing cycle and making purchases, new people will just begin receiving your information, thus continuing the cycle.  If you automate your marketing messages – such as via email auto responders or postcard campaigns – you will have a steady stream of sales.

10. Appreciate your current customers– Now that you have a customer base that has bought a product, you can use drip marketing to up-sell or cross-sell them to other products or services you offer.   Your current customers are a goldmine as they already know and trust you.

While planning a drip marketing campaign will take time, the effort is well worth the investment.  Once your automated system is set-up,  it will decrease the amount of time you spend in trying to manually follow-up with people and increase the amount of sales you can make each month.

Did you know that if you don’t have a clearly defined, written marketing plan… you are wasting money?

For the most part your business runs very well.  You attract clients and provide a product or service as promised.  What you may not know is that your business as well as any company must have a well defined, written marketing plan.  Without one, you are constantly searching for the “marketing gimmick of the month”.  This not only confuses your target market, but also wastes an enormous amount of money.  I see this approach every single day, but the good news is that your competition is probably utilizing this method also.  Now’s your chance to capitalize on their weakness.

Maybe it seems like too much work, but our experience tells us that your marketing plan (foundation) should be what drives everything you do going forward.
A company or new product launch without a marketing plan and associated strategy is like building a house with no foundation.  Sure, you could frame the wooden structure directly on dirt, but throughout the entire building process you will be constantly trying and guessing how to make everything level and square.  Build a strong, level foundation and the rest of the process is easy.

Marketing is very much the same way.  Almost 80% of all businesses do not have a marketing plan which is the solid, level foundation from which to build your business.  They know they need to generate customers, but yet they continually try different strategies, different advertising methods, public relations, etc. etc.  Each week they try something different, each week their marketing efforts have a different message.  Their advertising doesn’t follow tried and true graphic design layouts.  They have their brother-in-law’s kid slap together a web site.  Their web site looks like a 2nd grader put it together… their print ads looking nothing like their web site, their business cards or anything else they have.  Oh sure, they are spending lots of money but they are not getting results.  No consistency in look, message, or product offering.  Most importantly, they have no idea who their ideal client is, and/or what to say if they did know who it was.

The companies that DO have a marketing plan?  The companies that DO know who their “Ideal Client” is?  Well you know who those companies are.  They are the ones that typically “rule-the-roost”!  They are the companies that everyone wants to work for and many times have secured the “lions-share” of the market that you compete in.

Tell your advertising salesperson “Thanks, but no thanks”!

You as well as most companies are bombarded by advertising sales people… right?  Everything from promotional products like pens, key-fobs and calendars to yellow page ads, newspaper ads, and direct-mail.  Lately there is a new breed of salespeople promising you first page listings on Google, Yahoo, and BING.  Ask yourself, “If I do purchase advertising from one of these vendors, What am I going to say in the ad?”  Most likely, the ad salesperson will come up with some slick slogan, headline, or some ad copy they put together and rush it to press so they can get their commission.  What do they know about your business?  What is your target market?  What is your remarkable difference that will compel new customers to flock to your front door?  If any advertising salesperson doesn’t ask you up front, “Do you have a marketing plan & strategy?”, then they are probably only interested in making a commission.  Never put the “Cart Before the Horse”!  And never buy advertising without your road map, your foundation, your marketing plan.

Our fee typically pays for itself.

Heavy Guerrilla not only brings value to your entire company, we typically pay for our services in the first 12 months.  How you may ask?  We are one of the Northwest’s few true marketing and advertising agencies.  We get at the root of your marketing problems and work with you to generate real, foundational strategies that not only have longevity, but truly differentiate your company from the competition!  We’re not driven to sell you advertising just to make a commission, we’re driven by ROI.

While the underlying foundation of our strategies utilize long held, tried and true marketing methods, we also incorporate unconventional tactics to drive new sales, create excitement, and manage your entire marketing process.

Heavy Guerrilla Visual Communications Portfolio. While any well thought out business venture always starts with a business and marketing plan, they eventually delve in to marketing strategies that morph in to marketing tactics. Part of any great marketing plan includes visual communications to communicate the company or products marketing message.

Our portfolio of graphic design displays the end result of well planned visual imagery to communicate our clients’ goals to their target audience.

Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that the products and services of others may satisfy existing and newly identified needs and wants.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. ^[1] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”^[2]

Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering views marketing as a set of processes that are

interconnected and interdependent with other functions^[3], whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches.

The marketing concept

The term marketing concept pertains to the fundamental premise of modern marketing. This can be laid out as recognising consumer needs/wants, then designing products and services that correlate with consumer desires.

Marketing orientations

An orientation, in the marketing context, relates to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. There exist several common orientations:

Product orientation

A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product. A firm would also assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, people would buy and consume the product.

This works most effectively when the firm has good insights about customers and their needs and desires, as for example in the case of Sony Walkman or Apple iPod, whether these derive from intuitions or research.

Sales orientation

A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such. Consequently, this entails simply selling an already existing product, and using promotion techniques to attain the highest sales possible.

Such an orientation may suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a good that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

Production orientation

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given good. Thus, this signifies a firm exploiting economies of scale, until the minimum efficient scale is reached.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a good exists, coupled with a good certainty that consumer tastes do not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation).

Marketing orientation

The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It involves a firm essentially basing its marketing plans around the marketing concept, and thus forging products to suit new consumer tastes.

As an example, a firm would employ market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a good attuned to the revealed information, and then utilise promotion techniques to ensure persons know the good exists. The marketing orientation often has three prime facets, which are:

Customer orientation

A firm in the market economy survives by producing goods that persons are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm‘s future viability and even existence as a going concern.

Organizational orientation

All departments of a firm should be geared to satisfying consumer wants/needs. In this sense, a firm’s marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organisation.

Information from an organisation’s marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other department’s within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a good/service based on consumers’ new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the good, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm’s finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production and promotion of the product.

Inter-departmental conflicts are possible to occur, should a firm adhere to the marketing orientation. Production may oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital stock, which may be needed to manufacture a new product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organisation.

Mutually beneficial exchange

In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains a need/want that is satisfied, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a good. As no one has to buy goods from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goods with contemporary marketing ideals.

The Four Ps

Main article: Marketing mix

In the early 1960s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, at the Michigan State University in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.

• Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user‘s needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
• Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention. Methods of setting prices optimally are in the domain of pricing science.
• Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing. This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.
• Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, publicity, and personal selling. Branding refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix,^[4] which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan.

The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services.

Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach “is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach”.

The marketing environment

The term “marketing environment” relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affects a firm’s marketing decision-making/planning. A firm’s marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are:

• The macro-environment, over which a firm holds little control
• The micro-environment, over which a firm holds a greater amount (though not necessarily total) control
• The internal environment

The macro-environment

A firm’s marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale. These are typically economic, social, political or technological phenomena. A common method of assessing a firm’s macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis. Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyse national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology’s impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

The micro-environment

A firm’s micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm.

Marketing research

Marketing research involves conducting research to support marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into information. This information is then used by managers to plan marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm’s marketing environment, attain information from suppliers, etc.

A distinction should be made between marketing research and market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market. As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market research is a subset of marketing research.

Marketing researchers use statistical methods (such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlation co-efficients, frequency distributions, Poisson and Binomial distributions, etc.) to interpret their findings and convert data into information.

Product

Main article: New Product Development

Branding

Main article: Brand

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand represents the consumers’ experience with an organization, product, or service. A brand is more than a name, design or symbol. Brand reflects personality of the company which is organizational culture.

A brand has also been defined as an identifiable entity that makes a specific value based on promises made and kept either actively or passively.

Branding means creating reference of certain products in mind.

Co-branding involves marketing activity involving two or more products.

Marketing communications

Marketing communications breaks down the strategies involved with marketing messages into categories based on the goals of each message. There are distinct stages in converting strangers to customers that govern the communication medium that should be used.

Personal sales

Oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches individuals or a group of potential customers:

• Live, interactive relationship
• Personal interest
• Attention and response
• Interesting presentation
• Clear and thorough.

Sales promotion

Short-term incentives to encourage buying of products:

• Instant appeal
• Anxiety to sell

An example is coupons or a sale. People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. A major drawback of sales promotion is that it is easily copied by competition. It cannot be used as a sustainable source of differentiation.

Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.^[5]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA^[6] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.

Product focus

In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that profitable market segment(s) exist for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, marketers can aggressively over-pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, marketers must ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.

• An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers (employer branding).
• Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
• A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called Internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing, desktop advertising or online marketing. It tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.
• With consumers’ eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded content, custom media and reality marketing.
• The use of herd behavior in marketing.

The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.^[7] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people “to buy more by playing on the herd instinct.” The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart-cart technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A “swarm-moves” model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can “increase sales without the need to give people discounts.”

Marketing is also used to promote business’ products and is a great way to promote the business.

Other recent studies on the “power of social influence” include an “artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs” (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on “sales data from department stores and research companies;” a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about “which products are popular with like-minded consumers” (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

Overview

Do your clients LOVE YOU?  Love you enough to refer a friend or family?  Referral marketing is a structured and systematic process that maximizes word of mouth potential. Referral marketing does this by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about their supplier, their company, product and service and the value and benefit the supplier brings to them and people they know.

Referral marketing takes word of mouth from the spontaneous situation to a proactive and highly productive solution, where maximum referrals are generated due to professional customer-focused strategies.

Online referral marketing, using digital marketing as a platform, is the Internet based successor to traditional referral marketing.  Given the advances in tracking customer behavior online through the use of web browser cookies, online referral marketing provides a higher degree of accountability.

To put it in simple terms, referral marketing is a specific set of strategies and tools designed to bring small business new clients, qualified leads, and repeat business without the aid of, or in addition to, other advertising methods such as print, internet, radio or tv.

Many business owners have built great companies entirely upon referrals. Almost all businesses get started this way. The business lands a client, does some good work, and that client tells his/her family and friends. Before you know it, this kind of word-of-mouth marketing creates a steady stream of more customers and prospects.  But what most small business owners don’t understand, is that many of these same companies never understood that they could generate even more business if they actively participated in the generation of referrals.

Some professions, such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants, are very much suited to referral marketing.  Most people simply don’t feel comfortable hiring a doctor based on a doctor’s advertisement in the Yellow Pages. When looking for a professional of this nature, most people will ask someone they trust for a referral, such as a good friend or family member.

As a rule of thumb, the more personal or the more expensive a service is, the more likely it is that a potential client will seek the advice of another. A window washing company, for example, whose crew may spend a great deal of time going from room to room in a client’s house, will benefit greatly from referrals.

Why Referral Marketing Is So Strong

Experience tells us there is typically two things that often hold small business owners back from taking complete advantage of referral marketing:

• No System -They simply don’t have a system for tracking referrals
• Fear – That somehow no one would ever refer a prospect to his or her business

Let’s try to help you get over the fear of making referrals a core part of your marketing.

When we say fear, we mean things like fearing of being rejected, fearing that you will appear to be begging for business or fear that your existing clients don’t really care about helping you build your business.

All we can say to this is – you have got to get past this!  If you provide a product or service that helps people solve problems and meet needs, then you are doing a disservice to your customers and the world in general if you don’t actively seek referrals.

If you think your clients will be put off by your desire to involve them in helping you grow your business, you aren’t thinking about the relationship the way you should.

The entire act of generating a referral comes down to two simple things:

Provide a product or service that people like.

Manage the referral expectation.

Key Points to Remember:

• To get better referrals you need to target your prime referral sources.
• You must educate your referral sources in order to receive qualified leads.
• Make receiving referrals part of your client’s expectation.
• Find strategic partners and create multiple referral sources.
• Follow up with your referral sources.

Get to know the Heavy Guerrilla System.

The Heavy Guerrilla Marketing System – A step-by-step self guided road map for creating the ultimate small business marketing system.  Follow our system and you can create a powerful marketing plan that brings stunning marketing results.

Heavy Guerrilla Marketing Coaching is tailored to meet the needs of any size business or professional services provider. Services include complete one on one, personalized Heavy Guerrilla Marketing Coaching, Heavy Guerrilla Digital Technology Coaching, Heavy Guerrilla Power Marketing Groups, and individual Heavy Guerrilla Distance Coaching.

Heavy Guerrilla Small Business Workshops are available with Jerry Suhrstedt available to present small business marketing workshops, seminars and keynotes to groups and associations. Jerry has over 22 years experience in advanced marketing strategies, and a true sixth sense for what your business needs.

Heavy Guerrilla marketing brings a wealth of expertise with marketing systems for any industry, with in-depth experience in:

• Residential Home Building
• Residential Remodeling
• Sporting Goods
• Apparel & Soft goods
• Inline Skate Market
• Roller Skate Market
• Roller Rink Industry
• Ice Speedskating
• Real Estate
• Automobile Industry
• Manufacturing
• New Product Branding & Launch

Marketing-Plan-Pro

Ask yourself these questions…

Do I have a “Written” marketing plan with associated Strategy?
Do I know what my “Ideal Prospect” looks like.

If you are not sure what the answer is to any one of the questions above, you need help.  The difference between companies that have formal, written marketing plans and ones that don’t are night-and-day!

The business owner that has a written marketing plan and strategy, complete with a tactical time line are the owner’s that are typically  ahead of the pack. They are the ones that customers seem to can’t get enough of. They are the companies that are usually smiling when the economy is down and haven’t laid off any employees.

A simple tool we use with our clients is a software package called Marketing Plan Pro.  Simple, easy, very cost effective and asks the tough questions you need to think about.  While Marketing Plan Pro helps you with your marketing planning, and strategy, there is nothing that replaces experience and the gut instinct to make sure you are on track.  It can cost a business hundreds of thousands of wasted capital if your marketing strategy doesn’t hit the target.

Invest now for the future.

That is not to say that you couldn’t use Advertising as part of your marketing strategy.

Let’s talk about what marketing is “supposed” to do and why most marketing doesn’t come close.  I’ll explain to you exactly why everything you know about marketing and advertising is mistaken.

What’s the difference between strategic and tactical marketing?  Well, strategic marketing has to do with “what” you say and “how” you say it.  It’s the content of your message and the positioning of your brand, company, business, or product.

The second part of your overall marketing plan has to do with your tactical marketing program, has to with the execution of that strategic marketing plan as far as generating leads, placing media, and implementing a follow-up system.  Tactics are based on the three legs of marketing tactics, Advertising, Public Relations and Referrals.

By creating a carefully crafted marketing plan, you will systematize the entire process so that your marketing program is easy to implement and so its always consistent in message.

The distinction between “strategic” and “tactical” marketing is enormous and one every business owner needs to be intensely aware of any time you are talking about marketing.  Most small business owners mistakenly assume anytime you talk about marketing that you’re automatically talking about tactical marketing; placing advertisements, generating leads, creating a web site, attending trade shows, designing a direct mail postcard, doesn’t matter what, this is all tactical talk!  The overwhelming majority of business owners fail to recognize and realize that the strategic side of the marketing plan; “what” you say in marketing and “how” you say it is practically always more significant than the marketing medium “where” you say it, or in other words, where you tactically deploy that marketing.

If you fail to make this difference, then you risk being fed-up towards some forms of marketing and advertising that should be a part of your tactical plan but that you’d be likely to eliminate because they haven’t worked for you in the past.

When marketing results are less than best, the inclination is almost always to blame the marketing medium; the tactical part of the plan-without any regard for how good or how bad the strategy behind that marketing piece was.

But just because it didn’t work, don’t assume that it won’t work.  Most people don’t have the evaluation tools and the know-how to judge whether a poor marketing result stems from poor strategy or the poor tactical execution.