Internet Marketing Strategy: Important Concept to Grasp
Having a marketing strategy is one of the most important concepts that you need to grasp before you begin your online marketing career or before you begin online marketing for whatever business you have, including network marketing. The concept that we’re going to cover is the difference between strategy versus tactics. And I want to tell you, it took me several years to really grasp this. It was actually several years before I first about the difference and once I found out about it, it changed my career online forever because it became more efficient and more effective in everything I was doing. The reason most businesses fail online – especially online – is that the business owner doesn’t know the difference between a business strategy and a tactic.
Internet Marketing Strategy: Business Strategy VS Tactic
We’re going to talk about those differences so that you can understand the importance of developing a good strategy. Number one, it’s going to save you a lot of money. It’s going to save you a lot of time, which is the most important thing. A good strategy allows small businesses – especially home businesses – to more effectively utilize their limited resources. I mean let’s face it, we’re not billion dollar companies. We don’t have unlimited supply of experts out there that we can go to for help. So we’ve got to have a good solid foundation before we start implementing various tactics and tools. And finally, developing a good strategy forces you to think more about your purpose and commit to a solid game plan. And that’s the key. I think sometimes we get swept away in this online marketing world with all these fancy new tools and the new software out, and we forget about our main purpose and our objective about what we are trying to accomplish.
Internet Marketing Strategy: Keeps you focused
So as long as you have that marketing strategy lined out it’s going to keep you from veering off course and getting distracted. Having an Internet marketing strategy is going to allow you to decide which tactics are congruent with your overall plan so that you can utilize them to achieve whatever results or whatever goals you want to achieve. Having just a handful of tactics without that strategy will almost certainly lead to failure. Plus it’s a big waste of time as I already mentioned. I call it pinball marketing. When you start working online you are going to start getting e-mails from different experts and e-mails about the experts that they are endorsing. You are going to get to see all these great tools and the more you research them you are going to realize that you need some other tools and other tactics and other e-books and information products. And before you know it, you are jumping all over the place. You spent a fortune. You haven’t done one single thing that’s congruent with your overall business plan. And like I said it ends up being a big waste of money. You get a lot of doubt, you get depressed, and you give up. I mean you can really kill your business just by getting swept away in all that. So, having that strategy lined out first and understanding your purpose is critical before you start implementing any tactics.
Internet Marketing Strategy: Short Term and Long Term
The difference between strategy and tactics is number one, strategy is a longer term plan, whereas tactics are shorter term actions that utilize tools, tactics, resources and services. I say that strategy requires commitment, whereas tactics require testing, tracking and tweaking. They require a little more day to day work, whereas the strategy is your commitment over the long hall. Over a period of time. Perhaps a year. Strategy is your roadmap for your overall plan. Whereas, a tactic is a vehicle for the trip. So those are just some analogies that I like to use.
Internet Marketing Strategy: Very Important
I heard a great marketer, Steven Pierce, once say, “An acorn does not necessarily equal an oak tree. It’s certainly necessary, but it’s not sufficient. There are a lot of other things that go into it, including sunlight, rain, soil, minerals and different things.” But, unfortunately, in the online marketing world, most marketers think acorns. They are looking for acorns to keep planting acorns and thinking that they will have some miracle result. But they need to be thinking the oak tree. They’ve got to think the whole tree, and that’s the business strategy. So I hope that makes a little more sense to you now. You need to be aware of this and you need to develop a strategy ASAP or you are going to be wasting money and time every single day from here on out. When I work with students and businesses, I will not work with people who do not have that strategy. And that goes for all types of marketing. I hope this has been helpful and I hope it makes a lot of sense. Go make that plan!
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