Are You Spaghetti Marketing?

Spaghetti marketing is a new term I just found at a Copywriter Underground. It refers to the idea of throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing if it sticks. A lot of marketers, salespeople, and entrepreneurs, for that matter, often forget that every aspect of their business ought to have an underlying strategy. The lack of a defined strategy, when applied to marketing, may be called "Spaghetti Marketing" -- especially when you're spending marketing dollars without a clearly defined plan.

If your firm is engaged in spaghetti marketing, STOP!

It is time to take some time to rethink what you are doing. Put together the following components:

1. Vision: what do you want to accomplish with your marketing?

Do you want more exposure for your business? A stronger online presence? A bigger list? More conversions of people reading your material? Whatever your vision is, this will determine the next steps. Just keep in mind that your vision ought to direction relate to your company's mission statement.

2. Objectives.

Take, for example, the idea of increased online presence. That is a good vision, but won't produce results until you implement objectives underneath that vision to set in motion action.

Examples of objectives for this vision might be:
a. Increase website SEO (shameless marketing plug: ARRiiVE can help if you need it)
b. Launch a blog to build more backlinks to website (ahh.. yes, again, if you need help...)
c. Create a wiki to build more collaboration from business partners

You get the idea. The point is to define what objectives will better produce the vision and result in success.

3. Action Plan

The action plan are the actual steps you need to take to accomplish each objective. These might be like this:

1. Investigate differences between Typepad, WordPress, and Blogger.
2. Pick a platform.
3. Set-up layout for blog...
and so forth.

For another example, I have a goal to "create a wiki" for www.ARRiiVE.com and www.AspireNow.com right now. During a conversation today with a business partner, she mentioned that she found a software tool to make creation of wiki platforms that integrate seemlessly with your website. Bingo! There's step 1 down! Actually, a wiki ought to have its own unique vision, objectives, and action plans, too... so you can break this down into steps for each. My vision for my ARRiiVE wiki is to build collaboration around sales and marketing techniques that create new types of teams.

If you start putting this level of thought behind your marketing strategy, you might realize that the marketing efforts you've been putting out are not aligned with your strategy. In that case, your Spaghetti Marketing may not have done you any favors. I've always felt that the rifle approach is the better approach - as long as you know what target you're aiming at. So, pick a good target, take aim, put together your plan, and then fire at your objectives.
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Copyright © 2008 by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

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