Is your marketing on a leash? It should be if you are going to be successful in reaching your target market. Just like a dog is tethered to keep it from straying away, your marketing needs a restraint to keep it on task.

I received a text from a client of mine who was at a tradeshow. While sitting at his booth, he witnessed a lot of other companies and saw how they were marketing their brands. He decided to start a spur-of-the-moment campaign by taking some of their ideas and using them for his own marketing. He took out his phone and started taking photos of items around his booth, then shared them on social media with catchy phrases. Post after post was being published as he sat at the booth. I find that many businesses market by spur-of-the-moment creative ideas like this. Something hits them and they just react. The problem is, it usually doesn’t work. This spark of creative ideas usually comes about for a couple of reasons. First, they saw someone else doing it and they are copycats. Second, they either don’t have a strategic marketing plan in place or are not being disciplined to stick with the plan. Let’s look at both of these runaway ideas.

Copying what your competition is doing in marketing is generally a bad idea. Why? Because good marketing is designed to help you stand out from your competition, not look like them. Think about this from the standpoint of the consumer to whom you are trying to sell your brand. They will compare your brand to your competitor’s brand. If the consumer sees no difference, they will buy the less expensive option. In that transaction, your brand is reduced to a commodity. You might be thinking, hold on a minute! I didn’t say there wasn’t a difference between my brand and theirs, it is just that we are copying their marketing. I would argue that not choosing to go a different marketing route to showcase that difference will land you with the same disappointing results. Consumers need to see a clear difference between you and your competition and the best way to get that message across to them is by your distinct marketing.

This is where a strategic marketing plan will help you. I am not talking about just coming up with a better looking ad for your brand. I am talking about keying in on your strengths, measuring them against your market opportunities, defining your best target markets, discovering what that target market really needs from you, defining the difference between you and everyone else who is producing what you sell, putting all of that information into a plan for what you will market, when you will promote it, where you will promote it and how you will measure your success or failure. If that sounds like a lot to consider, it is! When you are disciplined enough to build a strategic marketing plan and stick to it, you will discover where your best ROI is happening. If you just do marketing on a whim, you not only won’t know what your marketing dollars are buying for you, but I can assure you, you will waste good marketing dollars chasing after the latest sparkly marketing medium with nothing to show for it. Marketing is a business discipline, not a whimsical creative spark that comes upon you like a mist.

One more thing I would caution you on when taking a look at the marketing happening around you: it is easy to get drunk on the creative aspects of marketing. Don’t get me wrong, I am all about great design in marketing. We need good artwork, but the creative has to help you sell your brand. It is easy to get focused on the wrong aspects of a brand that won’t sell a thing, but they look good. You can quickly eat up your marketing budget on a million trinkets that look great, but won’t help you sell a thing.

All of this is why I say your marketing has to be kept on a leash. In other words, there has to be some control over what you will and won’t do to sell your brand. Stepping beyond what your strategic marketing plan calls for you to do is wasted effort. Stay focused, be attentive to your target and help your brand stand out in the mind of the consumer.