Ready, Fire, Aim – Not!

At Blue Corona, our approach to every long-term client engagement is track and analyze first, then take action.  It’s surprising (and alarming) how many clients are (initially) frustrated by this order of operations.  I often wonder if they feel the same way about medical x-rays.  I imagine them wandering into the ER with a badly broken arm and ordering the doc to fix it without looking beyond the exterior!

If the cost of tracking is going to break your budget, you can’t afford to be advertising – focus on direct sales and word of mouth!  If you need advertising action ‘like yesterday’, I hope you’re looking for an executive coach and a therapist as well as a marketing partner!

Advertising and marketing people hate to be held accountable for anything measurable.  They’ve done a fantastic job training business owners to make quick advertising and marketing decisions without first collecting and analyzing data.  They’ve brainwashed marketing executives to act on gut intuition driven by fear and false urgency as if some marketing window of opportunity is about to close and if they don’t act now it will never open again.

If you want to fail and/or waste tons of marketing money, run your marketing this way. Ready, fire, aim, repeat!

But if you’re interested in seeing marketing results like you haven’t seen in the past (even during the “recession”), resist this type of thinking.  Instead spend more time than you think you should measuring, tracking, analyzing and aiming.  You’ll be amazed at how much more performance you get out of each marketing dollar!  Try it and see!