Okay, in the last entry we defined Sales, Marketing, Strategies and Tactics. Let us now delve into these a bit deeper.

Marketing tactics are such things as
Direct Mail
Cold Calls
Warm Calls
Brochures
Flyers
Advertisements
Referrals
Presentations
Promotion Pieces
Etc.

These all fit into the seven general components of marketing – Advertising, Direct Mail, Corporate Literature (Flyers, Brochures, etc.), Public Relations, Personal Contact, Market Education and the Internet.

These tactics are the specific action steps or techniques that you would employ to generate interest in your company, your product or your service. Where most small business owners fall down is that they just throw these out there and if they don’t work immediately, they stop.

The first thing I see that is constraining them is that (I believe) they are not sitting down and thinking strategically – on many different levels. First of all, are of their tactics done in a unified, cohesive and coherent manner? Do they have the same look, feel and texture? Are they sending the same message to the same specific target audience? Have they thought about, quite simply, what the point is? What is their overall strategic objective of marketing? Is it to generate leads; is it to get Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) or what? If they haven’t clearly thought this through, what is the point of doing any marketing at all? After all you need to have an end or a purpose in mind before you set out.

Second, even if they have done the above, they have not gone through this exercise on a tactic by tactic basis. For instance what do I want this direct mail piece to accomplish? What are its objectives? (Notice I used the plural here). Every tactic should have more than one strategic objective. Most tactics should have at least three objectives and a truly powerful tactic will have as many as ten.

In my next entry I will discuss Sales – the process, tactics and strategies.