Alex Marchetti, President/CEO of Whitestone Marketing Group. I want to share with you some thoughts on what the status of the marketing environment is today. Marketing over the years has really not changed. The only thing that’s changed is the available channels that you have in order to communicate or market your products or services. And what I’ve encouraged folks that we do business with is that there are so many channels, it’s most important for you to identify which channels are most appropriate for you in the businesses you have and the audience that you have or the buyers of your products and services. So appropriateness of channels is very important. Whether you need email, whether you need social media, mobile marketing, print, whatever it may be, it’s what does your audience or your prospective buyer feel most comfortable in that communication channel.

The next thing that’s most important to do once you’ve identified what those channels are make sure that the channel information is correct, the timing and the relevance of the information is delivered through those channels is good and it has to be very, very effective. Once you’ve identified those issues, the next thing to do is to integrate them so that they can compliment one another and strengthen the overall response and effectiveness. So what you want to do is you want to be able to after you’ve selected which channels you’re going to use and the messages, what you want to do is you do want to lay out a calendar specifically identifying when you’re going to engage a channel, the appropriate channel at the right time and measure those results.

So those are the keys to marketing your business in today’s environment.