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It is no wonder that marketers have a grim determination about them. They need all the staying power they can get because marketing is a slow, incremental effort that takes a long time to produce results. Seasoned marketers know that they must follow a sequence and give it their all at every step of the way or their marketing efforts will be diluted. This article aims to take you through the steps that must be taken if a marketing effort is going to be successful.

1. Definite goals. Any marketing drive must have a clear objective. If this is lacking it is likely that the whole campaign will veer off course at some point. These goals must be defined and accepted by everyone involved in the marketing. They more closely defined they are, the greater the chances of success. There must also be a time limit attached. A closely defined goal is this for example: to increase sales of Product A by 20 in six months.

2. Customer is king. It is important to analyze the market niche or segment, in other the words the potential customers for your product or service. This is where all marketing efforts are directed in a welltargeted campaign. If the marketer does not know everything about them then the marketing effort will be misdirected, resources wasted and sales diminished. Marketers tirelessly identify and analyze potential customers.

3. Create a plan and a budget and stick to it. Marketers spend a lot of time in planning and budget meetings, rightly so. Without a concrete plan it is easy to miscalculate the amount of money needed for a marketing effort and then to overstep the budget once the campaign is under way. Marketers need to tenaciously stick to the agreed plan and budget and work tirelessly to get the most for the marketing dollar at every level of the diversified marketing drive. To run out of money in the middle of a marketing drive is fatal.

4. Hire the right people. Great marketers take care not to rush into hiring. They get the right people at all costs and this takes precision and patience. They use headhunters and screen the best candidates remorselessly. Paradoxically, the more particular the marketer is about his marketing staff, the better the quality of marketer he will attract.

5. Try, and try again. Marketers are not afraid of small failures in their marketing drives. In fact they relish them. For instance, they will conduct split testing to prove that sales copy or an advertising medium or a promotional method is not good enough. This requires discipline and an acceptance that in order to find the best way to market a product or service you have to prove what the incorrect way is to market them as well.

6. Stay with it. Now there is a goal, a target market, a budget and testing has been done. Now the marketer really has to show his mettle. No matter what the shortterm results might be in terms of sales, the marketer must stick by his plan. As a rule of thumb a marketing promotion can be said to be a failure if in three months there has been no appreciable effect. This is a long time in marketing terms and the marketer must have the staying power to last three months before making any alterations to the marketing plan. Call it patience or call it staying power, marketer needs it in abundance.