Years ago, as a financial advisor (CLU, ChFC) I learned firsthand that most people spend more time planning how they’ll spend a one week vacation than how they’ll spend their retirement years.  I don’t think that’s changed all that much despite the recent market fluctuations.

In marketing a small business or professional practice, it’s not much different. People don’t prepare for marketing as much as they ‘just do it’.

Now Nike’s tagline notwithstanding, that’s just asinine. And no different than focusing more time on planning your one week vacation than your retirement years.

Seth Godin made a great post on this very topic.  He argues that business people are like ‘kids in a candy store’ gazing at all the ‘goodies’ — the myriad choices of marketing tactics that are readily available to us all . . . Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc..  Seth’s not saying there’s anything wrong with these marketing options (there isn’t).  But he admonishes us all to remember that they’re tactics, not a marketing strategy.

Tactics are supposed to support your marketing strategy.  And if your strategy isn’t already in place . . . then using any marketing tactic is akin to launching a rocket but forgetting to add the astronauts before lift-off!  You’d scream if NASA did that, but in your own business . . . you may be doing precisely that if you haven’t chosen your marketing strategy before your marketing tactics.

Point:
It’s not the ‘quick and dirty’ approach to marketing (which is appealing, I will admit!)  . . . but defining and articulating a viable marketing STRATEGY before you begin to consider which TACTICS you’ll use to implement and communicate your strategy is going to set you apart from your competitors and . . . far more successfully, too.