A large, comprehensive marketing campaign is a bit like a three-ring circus – there are a lot of pieces and parts to manage, and they’re usually all going on at the same time. For that reason, the idea of launching a large, complex campaign may be overwhelming and cause a business owner to just not do it. Instead, they stick with the one or two types of marketing they’re comfortable doing. But these days customers get information from too many channels for business owners to simply rely on one or two types of communication. An effective campaign has to reach people using many different types of communication. The key is to organize your campaign so it’s manageable, even if you have minimal marketing staff. Over the years I’ve relied on a few tips to help keep large campaigns organized and on track, and they can help you do the same.

If you want to start a rowdy debate among writers, proofreaders or a bunch of English professors, bring up the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma is the comma that appears after the last item in a list, such as:

Harvey brought hot dogs, buns, chips, dip, and drinks to the party.

This is the fourth follow-up to my original post Trick question: Are you a marketing planner or a marketing doer?, which touched on the basic requirements of a strategic marketing plan:

• Establishing objectives and goals
• Defining audiences
• Creating strategies and tactics
• Setting priorities 
• Establishing how success will be measured

If you market via the web you’ve likely noticed the proliferation of brands generating blogs, articles, e-newsletters, native advertising and other types of custom content. In fact, it’s difficult to avoid such content. There’s a reason for the increase in this type of marketing – it’s effective. In fact, Curata notes that almost 75% of companies who engage in content marketing report that it generates more frequent and higher quality leads than other types of marketing. Who wouldn’t want results like that?

This is the third follow-up to my post Trick question: Are you a marketing planner or a marketing doer?, which touched on the basic requirements of a strategic marketing plan:

• Establishing objectives and goals
• Defining audiences
• Creating strategies and tactics
• Setting priorities 
• Establishing how success will be measured 

This time around, I’ll be looking more closely at strategies and tactics – the core of a marketing plan. This is where the rubber meets the road!

By Ron Joyce, President & CEO, Joyce Farms

When you sell a product, the first thing you have to do is figure out what makes your product different, what makes it unique. My father started our company in 1962, and as I got older and joined the business I saw the need to take us in a direction that would make us stand out from other poultry producers. I saw that the industry was moving toward a race for faster, cheaper, increased production. The result was a uniform type of chicken bred to grow fast (so it consumed less resources) and with a big breast (so it provided more of the meat consumers wanted). But I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing – I wanted to bring something new and different to the market. That was flavor.