I recently came across the image to the right on a post by Greg Verdino. His post and the image bring up some great issues for discussion when it comes to marketing and the tools that are out there. The reality is, the tools aren’t going to stop coming. Right now there are some dominant players in social media (facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.) and the temptation is to run around making sure you’re everywhere at all times. The reality is, you should only be on what helps your overall marketing strategy.

There’s a couple of assumptions, of course, one being that you care to be active on the various social media sites and the other that there is a marketing strategy in place. For many, and this is especially true of the home or small business, they have the “we know what makes our business grow” attitude which is true to the level that you can see. But what if by changing the mark of success you could elevate your company to a much higher level?

Concepts like “marketing strategy” are a little ethereal at times, but maybe these questions would help clear up some of the things to consider:

  • Who are we trying to reach with our product/service?
  • What does that person look like/act like/care about?
  • What is the impression we want people to have of our company/product/service?
  • How are we going to maintain the various marketing channels we open?
  • How will we quantify success of our efforts?
  • Is there anyone out there doing this successfully that we can learn from (good/bad)?
  • How will these efforts work in to other marketing and customer service efforts if at all?
  • Who will own these efforts so they continue to grow?

I imagine if we check back in six months this image will get much more challenging to read and probably much bigger.

Author

With over a decade of experience, I have managed online marketing for a wide range of industries including biotech, high-tech, financial, higher education, non-profit, manufacturing, hardware providers, and startups. My specialty is helping business make the right turn with their online efforts focusing on lead generation and analytics.

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