The shift is on. Lanes are changing. What once was an open path is now closed. I am being sent on a detour. Do you think I am talking about this season’s road construction projects? No, I am actually talking about marketing strategies!

What do you do when the direction you were heading with your marketing makes an abrupt stop? This could be caused by a key person leaving your company. It is not uncommon for a business to depend upon one internal employee to manage all of their marketing efforts. What happens if they are no longer there? Marketing stops and remains parked until someone else can be hired, trained, gets up to speed, and then your marketing starts moving again. And how long does that take in your business? My guess is, way too long for anyone who is dependent upon marketing to do its job.

Here is another scenario that can detour your marketing efforts. Someone in your corporate offices comes up with an idea that you can cut your budget and produce the same results. So the plans you have made for marketing must be scaled back, yet you have to figure out how to attract just as many new customers to your brand as you did when you were fully funded. You try to decide what needs to stay and what needs to go without doing damage to your brand. Do you cancel the customer golf outing this summer or the trade show you were planning to go to in the fall? Do you scratch your new website or cut back on your advertising?

Or you could find your marketing strategy usurped by a whim of your boss. When the boss gets excited and commits a sizeable chunk of your marketing budget to a cause without asking anyone first, you might find that you are throwing good money to the bad. This is the flip side of a budget cut, but can be every bit of a derailment to your marketing strategy.

There is an answer. Let me advocate that you hire a marketing strategist outside your company to make sure your marketing doesn’t take a detour in times such as these. Each of these situations has happened to one or more of our clients at one time or the other. What did we do for them?

• An outside marketing consultant can do two things when a key marketing employee leaves: keep everything that pertains to marketing running and help you train the new marketing employee.

• When your budget has to be cut, a marketing consultant can help you see the impact of different aspects of your marketing efforts. This makes the budget cutting more practical and less likely to damage your overall brand. Also, an outsider can sometimes see things that cannot be seen from the inside. It could be that there is a more efficient way to reach your customers.

• When the boss announces a grand idea that is being paid for with marketing dollars, don’t panic. We have actually brought such ideas around to run with, and not counter to, the direction of a strategic marketing plan. It takes some effort, but even the wildest hair of an idea has merit when it fits the direction you are striving for with your marketing goals.

All of this means you must first have a direction in which you are heading with your marketing, and direction is decided by a strategic plan. If you lack either, I would suggest you take some time to draw up a marketing roadmap to get to your goals. That also is aided by having an outside marketing consultant. Strategy just doesn’t happen as you drive along the way. It is intentional - and will help you know whether you are on the right path with your marketing or not.