How Many Eggs Should Be In Each Basket?

This week I would like to begin to address a question I get asked quite frequently – how much money should I spend on marketing and how should this be allocated between competing tactics?  The first thing I always say is to never put all your eggs in one basket.  Marketing is an art but yet there is very much of a scientific element that comes into play when analyzing the data (this assumes you are collecting data which you should be!).  How do you decide between on and offline?  Within online, what about Paid Search vs SEO vs site placements (banners, text links, sponsored sections etc) vs PR vs creating content such as articles etc? In a perfect world with unlimited resources you would do it all but business, like life, is a matter of making choices and choosing between options.  The answer to this question and breakdown depends very much on your individual situation and ideally is derived from a higher-level strategic plan.  One of the things that continues to surprise me is how many businesses don’t really have much of a plan if one at all.   This can often mean that they don’t have a good handle on what their target audience is.

In all my marketing courses, we covered the 4 Ps of marketing but I really resonated with the article adapting these principles to the web and using the 4 T’s instead.  I encourage you to read the short article on the 4T’s.

This is not rocket science or particularly innovative but understanding and more importantly, implementing these 4 Ts is crucial to your marketing success.  Next time I will explore the 4 Ts in more detail including the second T – Tactics.