Hope Is Not A Great Strategy

When General Custer was completely surrounded, his chief scout asked, “General what’s our strategy?”

Custer replied, “The first thing we need to do is make a note to ourselves: never get in this situation again.”

Hope is not a strategy!

It amazes me how much companies rely on hope in their marketing and lead generation approaches. If we put an ad in the paper we hope they will respond or if we place a display ad in the local chamber magazine.. we hope people will notice our ad and call us.

The only way to ensure that hope is not the basis of a marketing strategy is to begin to demand a return on every marketing investment. And the only way to ensure you get return is to measure everything. And in every opportunity to drop hard earned money into an advertising opportunity that is held out in front of you as being the perfect answer to your marketing need, rigorously demand metrics.

The biggest waste of marketing money is dumping it into conventional advertising mediums and not knowing it’s return.