Axis and Allies: Part 1

I've grown up during this revolution of marketing and was a witness to the insanity long before I learned to embrace it as a marketer. When asking for marketing advice, people often receive answers full of great, tactiacal methods to get messages out to target audiences. Those have their place, but then you need to bring them all together and decide how to use them for YOUR OWN purposes. One method will almost always be the wrong answer.

Before you can market to ANYONE you need to have a strategic view of the situation. I knew someone who called it the "40,000-foot view." It's almost like playing a game of Chess, except that it's more complicated than that; maybe "Axis and Allies." You set up your pieces strategically, putting everything where you think it should be in order to get the biggest ROI.

The first part is, of course, researching to find the target you want. It can be a micro-target (niche) if you want to focus on a smaller group, or you can broaden your efforts to aim at a slightly larger group. It's up to you, but make sure the research gives you the information you need to make a correct targeting decision.

Along with that, make sure you also find out where your decided-upon target gets information. That way, you can then decide the next step: strategy.