You have invested substantial dollars thus far to develop your company, your product, and your go-to-market strategy.

But are you prepared to continue investing in order to see the results? Campaigns by their very nature happen over time, and no initiative can be constrained to a discrete point in time.

Advertising must be seen repeatedly to generate interest and adoption. Sales must follow up on leads. Marketing must be integrated and must continue to be fresh and on-target if it is going to generate results.

You are only as good as your last point of visibility.

Even the most solidly conceived marketing plans can occasionally encounter unexpected snags

What’s your Plan B?

Ultimately, the decision on strategic direction for any initiative belongs to the company.

However, no single person, no single department, and no single company has all the answers. A successful initiative is collaborative, and involves a community dedicated to its success, including customers, potential customers, agency partners, industry analysts, and press. The larger the circle of advocates, the greater the chance of record-breaking success. This is the same principle as social media, but it is much larger than social media.

So, who is in your circle?

The company that built the mold owns the market.

The company that comes along and breaks the mold takes their place. That company is the new visionary, fearless in the face of change, fearless in the face of risk, and has the depth of resources to stay the course. It builds something entirely new, desirable, and changes the rules of the game – for itself, for its customers, and for an industry.

Giants are big, mean, and nasty.

They have a reputation for gobbling up those who try to wake them, or worse yet, steal their market share. If you are going to wake the giant in the industry, you need a plan, an arsenal, and stealth. You have the courage to challenge the might of the giant.

Are you ready?

Nothing happens in a vacuum.

Any action a company takes in the marketplace today will generate a myriad of reactions from customers and competitors. A successful company not only knows this, but already has planned for these reactions and continues to stay a step ahead.

What reactions will your marketing initiative create?

Experience teaches us that you don’t fire a gun first, and then aim.

Likewise, in marketing, you are ill-advised to jump into tactics without first building a strategy. You might hit the mark, but the odds are against it.

The good news is that strategic is not synonymous with slow. In fact, a few hours or days spent developing a bullet-proof strategy can accelerate tactics by weeks and months!

The great news is, even if some tactics may already be underway, strategy can be implemented at any point in the process in order to improve results, and sharpen an initiative’s focus.

Dig deep. Go all the way back to the beginning.

How did you determine that this product or approach was the right one? What other assumptions have you made along the way? Are they validated? Can they be?

There’s no time like the present to ask these questions.

Recently some traditional recipients of government funding have come under the axe. In Georgia, the Georgia Council for the Arts was eliminated (”zeroed out”) by the House Appropriations Committee. The House is scheduled to vote on the budget sometime today. As a supporter of many powerful arts programs, including a youth development program, Moving in the Spirit, I know all too well the level of public apathy for these program, except, of course, among the disenfranchised who need them most and also cannot fund them.  The private sector that supports these programs through grants is inundated with many, many worthy candidates, with not nearly enough to go around.

It is our libraries, our teachers, who are being laid off in the hundreds and thousands across the country, and our cultural programs that are the first to go. Perhaps the libraries are from another day and time, but I think not. The idea of libraries is FREE access for the people of this country to knowledge. Even with the internet, FREE books are not available to the masses. When our teachers, especially those with advanced degrees who command higher pay, are eliminated, it is our children who suffer. When the arts are undercut, we are no longer a first world country. We are a country with a government that has shown itself incapable of making financially healthy decisions for decades, and now we will pay an incredibly high price for our ignorance, our impatience and our greed – even greater ignorance for decades to come. It is the last days of Rome. Or is it?

Do the right thing. Take a stand.
Click here to contact your state representative TODAY BEFORE 5 PM.

Along with this type of sales call, our offices have suddenly been besieged by door-to-door cold callers for everything from payroll services to insurance. The change in the climate is so remarkable, we have had to put up a “No Soliciting” sign on our door for the first time in thirteen years of business.

What does all this mean about the relationship between sales and marketing? Has marketing failed to develop the awareness and leads it is supposed to drive to sales? Have so many companies gone out of business that suppliers like these I have mentioned are desperately trying to save themselves by pressing their sales force to return to this random cold-calling approach to survive?

As a marketing agency, we are in no position to judge other business models, but we do practice what we preach, and those clients who pulled back on their expenditures during the rough times have resurfaced, and re-engaged us with the alleged resurgence of the economy. This is the case, we believe, because we have built enduring relationships with these clients, and built them based on delivering results.

However, it gives us pause to ask the question, “How has your company changed its sales model in response to the shift in the economy?”

The corollary, of course is, “Why have you changed, and has it worked?”