Marketing campaigns were not meant to be executed in one giant gulp. Especially when you’re talking about tossing marketing on the web into the mix. But that doesn’t stop companies from trying to take a giant bite. Or from choking on it when they find out they bit off a little more than they could chew.
Yes, I’m guilty of it too. We’ll all be doing the Heimlich together.
A Cake By Any Other Name…
Imagine your marketing mix as a cake. A giant cake with lots of different layers, each stacked one on top of the other to create the perfect combustion of flavor in each and every bite. This, my friends, is the ultimate goal of your marketing campaign. To create a mix that provides the perfect combustion of success for each ad dollar spent.
You can have your cake and eat it to, as long as you do it one layer at a time.
How is this cake created? First, you gather the ingredients for your first layer. You make the batter. You stick it in the oven. While it’s baking, you clean up your mess, gather your ingredients and mix up the second batter. Then you take that first layer out of the oven, toss the second layer in to bake, clean up your mess and pull together the ingredients for the fourth.
This process repeats ad nauseum until all the layers of your cake are firm, cooled and ready to use.
One Layer at a Time
Now, imagine trying to make all of those layers, all at once. Ingredients would be flying everywhere. You only have a certain number of spoons and bowls and measuring cups sitting in your cupboard. The battle for development resources would be epic. There would be constant bottlenecks at key points in your process. Deadlines would fly by as you tried figure out the best way to allocate the resources you had to achieve an end result in as short a time as humanly possible.
In other words, as we say down south, it would be a big ol’ mess.
The best way to make use of your marketing resources, and the most reliable way to guarantee success, is to bake your cake one layer at a time. Establish your website, then promote it. Create a blog before moving out onto Twitter. Develop your new product line geared toward local consumers, then take out ad time on the radio.
By curbing your need to create (and eat) that whole cake in one big bite, you’ll be able to enjoy not only the finished product but also the subtle nuances of flavor and yes, the sweet taste of success along the way.