We live in a world where instant gratification is a way of life. We get irritated by red lights and lines at the supermarket. The other week, my microwave died and I had to cook my dinner using the oven – it took 30 MINUTES!!!!! I was totally peeved that my dinner wasn’t ready in the usual 5 minutes. I mean seriously, how did people live before microwaves?!?
Yet not everything in life is instantaneous. Take growing a garden – I plant the seeds and nurture the seedlings starting in mid February. I harden off the plants in April and transplant them to the garden during the month of May. I am rewarded with some crops as early at June, but most aren’t ready until August. That's seven months – I work and wait 7 months for the taste of a fresh tomato on the vine – but there is there’s nothing like it in this world!
Marketing is like growing a garden – there isn’t much instant gratification involved and there is no silver bullet that I’ve found. In order to succeed, you need to have a systematic approach and a system in place to measure and monitor your responses. In other words,
1. Pick the marketing tools that fit your personality, your customers and your budget.
2. Develop an annual calendar of your marketing activities including time and cost.
3. Set up a system to track where your customers heard about you.
4. Tie that back to your marketing activities.
5. Throw out the ones that don’t work for you and stick with the ones that do work for you.
It takes time and effort to build a good marketing program. It’s an ongoing process – not something you can do once or twice and then stop. Remember the sweet taste of a home-grown tomato.
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