Emergency Marketing

By Rocco Cipriano

There seems to be an epidemic of marketing emergencies.

I recently got a call from new client with a marketing emergency. They hired a new sales team, but didn't have any sales support materials for them - no brochures, no product data information, no nothing. And guess what else they don't have - no marketing plan. They had no specifics on what they want their marketing to achieve - only the ambiguous notion to sell more. Without a marketing plan, we didn't know who their target audience was, or the reasons customers buy their product. We also didn't know the key benefits the company provided, or what made them different from their competitors. So what did we do? We guessed! We guessed what the benefits the company provides. We guessed why customers buy from this company and we guessed what were the advantages our client had over their competition. I hope we guessed right or a few months from now, there is going to be another marketing emergency.

Guessing in marketing inevitably leads to mistakes - costing you time, money and momentum!

Without a strategic marketing plan, you're really just guessing what message and medium is going to be most effective for your business. The ironic thing is that after a few wrong guesses you will have wasted a lot of money - much more than the cost of developing a strategic marketing plan that could have mapped out an effective long-term strategic and tactical direction for your business. A marketing plan provides stability in your marketing efforts, and with a lot less stress. This also cuts down dramatically on marketing emergencies that invariably will pop-up, which end up be costly and largely ineffective.

Seth Godin, the renowned business author and blogger, once said, "Marketing is not an emergency. It's a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn't end until you're done."

There seems to be two types of business people. Those that have a long-term vision and a methodical approach - kind of like the tortoise in the fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare." And other are like the Hare, running off to put out one fire after another - dealing with only the present emergency at hand. These people seem to thrive on creating a stressful work environment and juggling multiple emergencies at once. There's an adrenaline high in this kind of business management. However, this is like playing Russian roulette--one day, the bullet is going to be in the chamber when you pull the trigger... I wonder if they consider being unemployed as less stressful?

For more information about developing an effective marketing plan for your business, you can check out the InSight Marketing website.

Rocco Cipriano - President & Founder, InSight Marketing
Rocco is a seasoned marketing professional with over 30 years experience in the fields of advertising, marketing and graphic design. He is the author of best-selling book on brand marketing - Branding Insights for Small Business and has won numerous awards for his design and advertising work.