Choosing the right marketing plan

Every good businessperson knows that choosing the right marketing plan is one of the most important (if not the most important) building blocks when attempting to create a long-lasting, strong, firm, powerful, influential, rich, constantly growing, constantly improving, constantly branching out, constantly innovating, constantly contributing business. Choosing the right marketing plan is the lifeblood of your business. Choosing the right marketing plan means choosing the face your business wears before the public. Choosing the right marketing plan means choosing your business's "image"-that is, its stance politically, its attitude toward important issues, its commitment to charity and societal healing, and so on and so forth. Choosing the right marketing plan, in other words, is sort of like choosing the personality of your business.
If you think about a marketing plan as you would a personality, new angles and approaches and perspectives are immediately manifest. Everyone has heard the maxim "You can't judge a book by its cover"-and everyone knows it's true-but only to a certain extent. Oftentimes you can judge a book by its cover-for example, if the books cover depicts men in spacesuits fighting green, gooey, one-eyed aliens, and everyone's got laser guns, you automatically make a judgment: "Science fiction." Contrariwise, if the cover depicts a cowboy in pure white fighting a cowboy in pure black, and both of them have six-shooters, you automatically make a judgment: "Western." And so on. If you're standing in line in the grocery store and you see one of those books whose cover depicts a gorgeous, impossibly muscular, golden-haired warrior holding a gorgeous, impossibly busty raven-headed damsel in distress, you don't wonder if it's by Charles Dickens. Perhaps I'm laboring this point a bit, but only to point out that your marketing plan is literally the "cover" of your business.

People judge things by their "covers" all the time. That huge guy with 144 tattoos, a black sleeveless T-shirt depicting a bloody skull, torn jeans, a heavy wallet chain, enormous steel enforced boots, a shaved head, dark glasses, a forked goatee, etc.-you're going to "judge" that guy, even if in only the most general way. "Motorcycle type," "tough type," etc. And the same holds true for less colorful examples. When choosing your marketing plan you're choosing the outfit, hairstyle, aura, etc., of your business. People will judge what your business "is" with a glance, and you want that glance to be as full of positive feelings as possible.
Therefore, choosing the right marketing plan means choosing the right marketing planners. This is key, this is crucial, I'll say it again: Choosing the right marketing plan means choosing the right marketing planners. You need to find marketing people who are savvy when it comes to politics, entertainment trends, aesthetics, writing, and, of course, marketing. A good marketer is different from a good, say, manager. A good marketer is usually a more creative, innovative, unmoored personality. Put a good group of marketers together, people who share these qualities and have strong backgrounds in the art of marketing, and your job is nearly done.
Your marketing plan will obviously be built around whatever service you are offering to the public. This means that the last paragraph will have to be qualified somewhat. You aren't just looking for ways to market your service that are "hip," "cool," "with it." That can backfire as fast as any other specific approach to marketing. You've got to market your service in a way that's appropriate to your service. If your service deals directly with the use, perhaps a knowledge of current trends in pop culture and so forth will be helpful; if your service deals directly with the elderly, obviously, current trends in pop culture are useless. These points may seem obvious, maybe even too obvious. But haven't you ever walked through the mall, seen a poster advertising this or that, and thought: "How awful. I don't know what they were thinking when the they came up with that one"? We all have. The same goes for commercials on TV, ads in the newspapers, magazines, and so forth. This experience is a direct result of marketers not considering the obvious, simple truths listed above. When choosing the right marketing plan, choose the right people and the right approach based on your company's service.