A friend of mine called me the other day, and he was mad — He said (more or less): “My marketing isn’t working, and I feel like I’ve been ripped off.”

He was paying a guy $25,000 a year to run his marketing, build and maintain a website, and write content.

He sent me a blog post the guy wrote. I didn’t even have to read it. I took one look at it and I said:

“If I had paid someone for this, I’d be mad.”

My friend, who shall remain nameless, was understandably upset. I sent him a small novel detailing the post and its failings, and then I posed him a challenge:

“This particular piece of crap isn’t really what’s important — the question is this. Are you getting a return on your investment? Is the marketing strategy working?”

He laughed.

He said no.

Because the strategy was nonexistent.

Individual Marketing Tactics Mean Nothing Without Strategy

A bad blog post every now and then likely won’t hurt a lot.

A stupid ad that didn’t bring in the business you thought it would can be overcome.

A short lapse in your social media marketing, a bump on the print document road, a failed radio spot — individually, they’re not game killers. They shouldn’t be the end of your marketing.

Or your business.

Not if you’ve got a diverse marketing portfolio.

Marketing Strategy Is Like Investing — A Bad Investment Could Be Why Your Marketing Isn’t Working

Pouring all your money into a single stock can work very well.

If you’re really lucky.

If you poured every dollar you had into Microsoft and Apple a few decades ago, you’d be rich.

But this is a dangerous strategy.

And even Microsoft and Apple can fail.

A diverse stock portfolio is better, stronger. You can’t rely on hitting the lottery.

You need to plan for ebbs and flows, successes and failures.

Marketing is the same.

I see people all the time who put their marketing eggs in one precarious basket.

An individual tactic, on its own, can be quite successful — those radio ads might bring in a lot of business, initially.

But what if they stop working? What if a more well-known brand starts doing their own radio ads? What if, suddenly, your ads are working for the bigger guys instead of you? What if they never worked in the first place?

What if your marketing isn’t working at all?

What if your basket falls apart?

Marketing Tactics — A Sum Greater Than Its Parts

If your tactics really are chosen carefully, the overarching strategy they weave together will not just supplement other tactics in cases of failure.

They’ll augment those tactics.

It’s that stupid buzzword — synergy.

The sum is greater than the parts.

A website alone basically does nothing.

A website paired with ads is better.

A website paired with ads and weekly blogs is better still.

A website paired with ads, weekly blogs, and keyword research can be pretty awesome.

Starting to make sense?

The blog posts alone might bring in some business, but not nearly as much as they might if they were targeted to specific keywords. The ads might bring folks to the website, but those people might bounce away if there’s not awesome content to read.

And if your blog writer suddenly decides to swear off Western society and move to a desert island in the South Pacific, you don’t have to worry about your entire house of marketing cards collapsing.

A Marketing Strategy Template to Reach Diversity

The fix here is pretty simple, though time consuming:

Diversify your strategy. Pick a wider variety of marketing tactics.

First, analyze your marketing, then, build a marketing strategy (or hire us to help you build one).

Finally, pick your tactics. You’re looking for marketing tactics here that supplement each other in case of failure and augment each other when they succeed.

And if you’re not sure what tactics you should be picking (or even what a marketing tactic is), then download our free template to plan your marketing strategy and pick your tactics.

Just check out our resources page here.

Happy planning!