Your marketing strategy is one of the key factors that can make or break your business. When you move from the ranks of employee to self-employed, or entrepreneur, the time you spend on various activities must change. And the most important areas are:

• Crafting your marketing strategy, and then even more important -
• Effectively executing your marketing strategy.

If you are a technical specialist, such as :

• Engineer
• Accountant
• Designer
• Systems Developer

you probably will not enjoy this message - “You can no longer afford to operate ‘in the business’ - you need to be in the business of ‘marketing the business’“.

Einstein is attributed with the saying - ‘Nothing happens till something moves’.

In the marketing arena, this has been modified to : ‘Nothing happens till something is sold’

Being technically competent, and therefore being able to create great products is commendable, but if you are unable to sell your products because you either:

• Do not know how to identify and execute an effective marketing strategy, or
• Cannot harvest your customer data because your data and systems are so poor

then you will never enjoy all the rewards that a successful business can deliver. An effective marketing strategy, and an effective marketing action plan is therefore fundamental not only to your success, but also for your business survival.

Your primary role is therefore to master the various aspects of marketing, and to craft a multi-faceted marketing strategy that will deliver a constant stream of quality prospects to your business.

Direct marketing needs to be a key component of this marketing strategy - for several reasons:

• It’s measureable, and so you can quickly find out what’s working, and what’s not.
• It’s more affordable than corporate style marketing ( expensive ‘glamour’ advertising).

The various direct marketing methods - direct mail, postcard marketing, email marketing, etc. are relatively easy to gain a basic level of competence, and you can carry out these direct marketing activities quite quickly.

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This section of the site has articles in the following sub categories:

• Culture (1)
• Data Quality (1)
• Direct Marketing (9)
• Unique Selling Proposition (6)

Take the time to also work through the categories of direct marketing methods, as they provide many tips that will help you execute your marketing strategy.