1. Effective Marketing Strategies For the Growth Of The Business!!
When it comes to utilizing effective marketing strategies, who can you trust? In doing your research of
what marketing consulting companies or top marketing firms say you should use, the run the gamut.
However, when distill them all down to their essential or underlying principles, what do you find?
Let’s take a look at what some of the top marketing firms say. PR Web says you need to build brand
awareness and build a buzz for your company. They also say you need to dominate the major search
engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing – well DUH!
Duct Tape Marketing says you need to build a PR campaign to get your name out in the marketplace.
They also suggest you build a strategic partnering platform and that you have to win the local search
game – that is if you are a local business.
Insight pool says you need to identify your prospects and influencers and engage with them through
social media… well okay, but how is that such an effective strategy? How is what they do unique in the
marketplace? And most importantly, how do you apply these strategies in your business.
Copernicus has ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective Marketers’ of which some make good sense but other
will leave many scratching their head to figure out exactly how do I apply this to my company?
At this point I think it’s important that we define ‘effective marketing strategies’ so that we have a
foundation on which to base our evaluations. Let’s take a look at each term more closely and then
synthesize what they mean when used together. (I am using dictionary.com for reference for the
following definitions.)
Effective – producing the intended or expected result
Marketing – the act of buying or selling
Strategies – a plan, method, or series of maneuvers for obtaining a specific result

2. See if you agree with me in synthesizing these three words into one concise definition. “Effective
marketing strategies” are a method or plan for buying or selling that produces a purchase or sale. Does
this make sense?
There is a misconception in the field of marketing that continues to be perpetuated in that when people
typically think of “marketing” they are mistakenly talking about advertising mediums and not the
content or message contained within those mediums. For example, when a business is planning to run
some marketing, what they typically mean is that they plan on running some ads. Most businesses will
concentrate on the medium, i.e. newspapers, magazines, Internet (PPC), Yellow Pages, billboards,
signage, radio, TV, etc. When they do this, they tend to forget that the message is far more important.
In marketing, language is everything. It matters in terms of the message that reaches your prospects and
it matters in terms of what the word “marketing” actually means. At marketing firms, there has been a
tendency for the sales staff to use the term “marketing consultant” to describe everyone at the firm,
from the most experienced consultants at the firm to the gal or guy at the front desk who really just
answers the phones. They’ll use the terms to describe what they do, no matter what they sell. Whether
they’re selling television ads, brochures, web sites or anything else, they’ll call themselves “marketing
consultants.” The problem with this is that these “consultants” really don’t do any consulting.
Where business owners are concerned, the term marketing is oftentimes used as if it was
interchangeable with selecting a venue for marketing and, further, it’s as if that’s all that marketing
consists of. In fact, marketing is all about the content and messages—language—and the first
consideration should be the message, not the medium and not whether or not someone who calls
themselves a marketing consultant sold you on an idea for marketing in a magazine, a newspaper, on
television or wherever else.
Our customers at Strategic Marketing Consultants can typically get 3 to 10 times the response rate from
their advertising through having us re-write their content so that it works. Additionally, not only does
the response rate go up, but their conversion ratio increases dramatically – as much as 200% or more.
Here's a Simple Exercise
What was the last advertisement that your company paid for? What was the format? Was it a television
advertisement, a banner ad on a website, a brochure or something else?
How much money did you pay for the advertisement? You paid for the design time, of course, and the
final product and, you paid for an ongoing run in certain time slots or at certain frequencies.
Now, here’s a question that’s possibly more important than all the others you just answered: How much
did you pay for the development of the content? If you’re like a lot of businesses out there, you
probably paid nothing for content. This is rather counterintuitive, since the medium is completely
worthless if it doesn’t have the proper strategic message.
If you didn’t pay to have the content created, you probably had the content put together by whoever
was available in the marketing department, the salesperson or the production department at the venue

3. where you advertised and, of course, they probably looked over some of your existing (platitude-laden)
marketing materials and created your ad based on that. They probably billed you for being a marketing
consultant, to boot!
Think about this – the most important part of your advertisement – that is the content and the message
– was assembled for FREE by people who typically have no earthly idea about how to create powerful,
magnetic messaging in the first place.
Remember the axiom “You get what you pay for?” Do you see where I’m going with this? If you didn’t
pay for anyone to create the content or message of your advertising, then you got what you paid for.
You paid nothing; you got something that was, at best, worth nothing, and therefore worthless.
You have to think about your message whenever you think about marketing. Without seriously thinking
about the message, you’re not marketing at all. If your marketing consultant isn’t thinking about the
message, they’re not consulting.
Your message needs to be crafted with attention given to the content and the delivery of your message.
You don’t have to concern yourself with where or how you’re going to say the message, just with what
you’re going to say. When you have the right strategic message, then you can start thinking about what
mediums might be good for delivering it, but don’t put the cart before the horse.
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