Strategy Vest

This internet stuff is pretty new to many of us.

Some of us have immersed ourselves in it. Others have given control to "the geeks, the gurus and the computer guys" We have taken to trust them to move us up on Google search; to build our sites; to send out the tweets; to update the face book pages and my space pages; to add coupons and to count clicks.

In many cases, we have turned our marketing efforts over to these new media manipulators, without considering the strategy behind the communications. Yes, these 21st century media mavericks know their stuff and they are no doubt good at what they do because people hire them. And they produce results; that is getting people to the site. Or getting people to surrender their email address and cell phone number.

New media is based upon the fact that you can track purchasing behavior and frequency and all the other good things about segmentation we can think of, but without the great offer and the emotional call to action, what are we doing?

In our quest for the magic pill,the miracle elixir, we continue to turn our future over to those who know less about our particular operation than we do. We rarely ask them to study our market or to define what our objectives should be or what we should expect. Why don't we demand this level of accountability?

The magic pill is only as good as the strategy behind it. The tactics must be based upon analytical, strategic conclusions garnered from empirical data. It is not about embedded images or invisible codes or anything else. All these machinations do is to get the prospect to your site more efficiently to see something that is not relevant to them. Duh!

But, if your offer sucks or is not on target, getting people to your web site is really counterproductive. After all, isn't that what "old media" used to do?

So before you hire Merlin to do "his internet thing", make sure your objectives and strategy are bullet proof. Now go put on your strategy vest.