This is the second post in this series. The previous post can be found here.
If you’ve got plenty of time on your hands to develop and implement your marketing strategy, this information doesn’t apply to you. But, in my experience most company executives and entrepreneurs suffer from a common malady…there’s only 24 hours in a day.
How does this limitation negatively impact your DIY marketing?
Building and managing a successful business is about leveraging resources. Many executives make the mistake of thinking that their college Marketing 101 course qualifies them to do the strategic analysis necessary to properly position their offerings. Or worse, they hire a low-cost recent graduate with no real-world or legal specific experience.
Marketing becomes a revolving door. Executives hire a marketing person, expecting them to know their product and service offerings and ‘hit the ground running’. Most often the honeymoon period ends early and the company is back to square one. Marketing to the legal vertical is different. Using an experienced legal marketing specialist to validate strategies, confirm positioning, and help create a logical plan is a wise investment in your business.
Most executives I meet are flooded with multiple priorities. They’re wearing lots of hats, filling several roles, and let’s face it; they haven’t got the time to dedicate to developing, implementing, and analyzing a successful strategy and plan.
Marketing planning is an intensive discipline. I recommend to my clients that they ‘start at the end’. By determining upfront what they want to accomplish in a given period, we can develop strategies and plans to reach those goals. And having specific goals allows us and them to monitor progress.
It’s easy to get sidetracked with marketing:
Sales are off and you need to do something to fix it now
A call comes in to sponsor a new event
Your competitor is speaking on a panel or exhibiting at a conference and you need to be there too
Now you’re reacting. Instead of developing a strategy, creating a plan, implementing the plan, and measuring the results, you’re all over the place. You need help filtering the noise and figuring out what actually fits into your overall strategy.
To be successful at DIY marketing you need to make it a priority, find the time to dedicate to marketing, and have the expertise and discipline to create and follow a strategic plan. If you can’t make these commitments, you’ll be hard-pressed to succeed in fulfilling your goals.