What works?

If successful marketing is all about obtaining more, higher margin sales, and achieving these sales is all about your brand, and great branding is all about trust, what is your most effective marketing strategy?

The answer is you want to find the lowest cost methods, with the highest leverage, which results in the greatest amount of trust among potential clients.

Here, things get interesting.

• Conventional advertising in mass media may reach many people, but can you build a campaign that creates trust (brand) at reasonable cost -- especially if you haven't advertised much before?

• Word-of-mouth referrals of course are inexpensive and loaded with trust, but how do you leverage this asset? If you do nothing, often nothing happens.

• Great media publicity, in electronic and print media read and viewed by your potential clients -- especially in a community where you have great word-of-mouth reputation, offers truly high leverage opportunities, little cost, and great trust-building advantages. (That is where our publicity and media services come in handy.)

• Community service, through active, engaged participation in organizations and groups related to your clients, has less dramatic leverage opportunities, as many of your relationships are one-on-one and in small groups, but the intensity of the relationships and their quality (especially if you are connecting with community referral leaders), can be dramatic.

If you put everything together into an effective package, you can leverage all the resources to maximum effect: Consider the impact of taking the lead on a community activity, relevant to your business, worthy of great positive publicity.

Would your results be greater value for money than conventional advertising?

I think so, by far, but I also acknowledge this type of activity requires work, specialized skills and knowledge you are unlikely to have, and is rarely if ever conveniently packaged for you by friendly and co-operative sales representatives.

That of course brings you back to our own organization's philosophy. We'll do our best to help you with the bigger picture. But we can't do it for you. You need to put these pieces together in your own mind, understand your market, and then take the lead to make things work.