Are you a journey or a destination person? Let me explain what I mean. Whenever my family goes on vacation, my wife is one who enjoys the journey. She likes to laugh about the funny things that are said in conversations along the way. To her, the journey is one of the best parts of a vacation. On the other hand, I am a destination person. I can’t wait to get where we are going. If a Star Trek transporter were real, I would own one and beam the family directly to the beach! I don’t especially like traveling, especially when I am driving in traffic or squished into an airplane seat. Call me crotchety, but I just tolerate the journey. If that is all there were to a vacation, my wife would be happy. I would not!

Is marketing the journey or the destination? Many business owners that I talk to want marketing to be the destination. That is, they want to jump straight to the cash register as soon as someone is exposed to their marketing. Although that may work with some products (think about impulse buys at a checkout), marketing typically does not work that way. Marketing is a process that exposes potential customers to the best features of your brand, but especially those that make either the consumer feel good or solve a problem for them. That takes some time to convince them you have the best fit for their needs.

However, let’s not forget the destination in marketing either. The destination is a sale. Too many times, marketing is ineffective in getting the customer any closer to a sale than when they started the process. There is a temptation to fall in love with the creative aspects of marketing. It is a cool thing to have a video. What if the video doesn’t help make the case for someone buying your products or services? It is not much of a marketing tool if it isn’t driving your customers to a sale.

Here is the truth about marketing devices: some are meant to catch the attention of the consumer and get them interested in what you are selling. Others are designed to complete the sale after the prospect has shown interest in buying product or services from you. A good marketing strategy will help you to align your marketing efforts with the tasks you need to accomplish in order to walk a consumer from being a person in the marketplace to being a prospect to being a customer. That is the marketing journey.

If you find your marketing without a destination, stop what you are doing and define some goals. How will you know when you have crossed the finish line? If you have sales goals, but your marketing is not driving you to your destination, it is time to re-evaluate your marketing strategy. Make changes that make sense to get you where you need to go.