Carving a Marketing Path for Your Business

Guest Contributor: Shannon McCaffery
Shannon's Posts - Shannon's Site


Have you ever been at a crossroads in business or in life where there were two different paths to choose from? Did you put yourself through major pain and suffering because you didn't know which one to take?

Why not ask yourself: How did I make my decision as to which path to follow? What was it based on? What if I made a mistake and took the wrong path? What am I going to do next time?

I've been faced with choice dilemmas countless times in my life. After each decision, I've found that un-doubtedly I'd made the right choice at that time. I've not regretted a single choice. Honestly, I believe there are no right or wrong choices. I make decisions based on 3 resources: creating a list of pros and cons, listening to my gut, and getting feedback on my decision from a team of close and trusted friends and colleagues.

We will continue to find ourselves on the threshold of change, our fate determined by a choice we're about to make. The question is not how do we eliminate the need for making difficult choices, it's how do we avoid the paralysis that prevents us from taking any action. So many businesses lose ground by facing the empowerment of choice with indecision and inaction.

They either don't act on it at all, or act so slowly that change is ineffective.

What I want for you and your business is to see you take control of your choice opportunities: plan ahead, carve out your marketing path, make your decisions swiftly, and take action. One way to start is to calculate the lifetime value of your clients. Find out how much acquiring a new client is worth to you and then make informed decisions on your marketing budget for the year.

Also, thoroughly analyze your client base-What do they eat? Where do they shop? What do they read? Where to do they live? What kind of car do they drive? How many credit cards to they have? Do they have children, a computer, etc.? The more you know about your client, the better you can reach them with an advertising strategy that has enough variety to meet their needs.

Whatever your current marketing plans are, it will be time well-spent to figure out what your clients are worth and who they are. Then you'll be able to better incorporate your marketing campaigns to get their attention and show how well you are positioned to meet their marketing needs.