I hear so much about all the different promotional streams that are in use today, Social Media, Website SEO, Theme Search engine marketing, Nurturing strategies, and thats not to mention all the "Traditional methods of marketing" Direct Mail, Telesales, PR & Media, Brochures, Conferences, Trade Shows.. WOW!! How in Alberts name, are we supposed to run all of that, and get the work done for our clients !! Phew!

Well I'm a firm believer that you have to pick your battles, and the smart kid, with everyone elses lunch money in his pocket, is the kid who picks the battles he can Win!

Thinking about how to Win battles, there are only two ways. Either you need a significant strategic advantage (i.e Position, Territory) or you need a significant Military advantage (i.e Better product, or Service). More importantly you have to think about how you deploy your limited resources to greatest advantage.

Now take a look at the current economic climate, businesses of all sizes are being hard pressed to sustain cashflow and maintain sales. Now every marketeer that's out there, will tell you "What ever you do don't cut your marketing budget". Of course every business owner knows that its not as simple as that, and when the cash is tight spend on marketing gets the axe.

Now I'm going to relay a great little secret that a great friend of mine (Paul Stevenson, of Wall to Wall Sunshine) let me into. Its all to do with strategic advantage.

In a ordinary economic climate, you and your competitors are allocating budget to marketing, the long and short of it being the more bucks the bigger the bangs! Ultimately if your competing with larger players in your field, then your outgunned, they have the Military advantage. Now we all wish at these moments that our competitors would just take their foot off the gas, reduce their budget, make a mistake, just simply stop! and give us a chance to eek out a little more of their market share.

We'll guess what ? That's exactly what they're doing, and better still the larger companies with a tighter fixed cost to turnover gearing, are having to cut their marketing budgets before they chop back costs else where. The key is to be able to get some activity going, and the more the better. In particular working on brand placement, and being seen your market space. How you go about doing that is up to you, but if my firend Paul know's his onions, and I believe he does, then its time to run out of the Saloon with both guns blazing. You might just find the bad guys have left, and suddenly your the talk of the town!