A marketing strategy when implemented can make businesses achieve their goals. Even if you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 enterprise, a well planned marketing strategy can get you results that you want.

Nevertheless, still many business owners fail to make positive results from their marketing strategy. The reason behind this is that many still mistake the activity from the strategy. What do I mean by this? That you focus too much on the activities rather than the process of putting forth a strategy.

There’s a big difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing activity. Most common mistakes are made because business owners and marketers confuse these two concepts. Many believe that when they do a marketing activity, it’s already the strategy to market one’s business.

Case in point: When you wake up one morning and decide to perk up your business by putting in place a new strategy, you decide to make a list of what your marketing staff needs to do in order to revive your sales – write marketing letters, send out an invitation printing material for an event, email greeting card printing pieces to correspond with the season, or even to update your list of clients. The list goes on for your marketing strategy.

What you don’t realize is that you’re wasting your time with ‘activities’ rather than a strong marketing strategy. The list you provided is what we call as activities. These are methods and means you use to make people aware of who you are and what you can do. Unfortunately, none of the things you have listed can be considered a marketing strategy. What they are mostly are parts of THE marketing strategy.

A marketing strategy on the other hand, has to have a method – a method to make yourself known to your target clients; a method to gather data and information on your target clients; and another method for keeping in touch with your target clients. The key word here is ‘method’. There is a process or a system in place to help you achieve the results you want. When you have all three methods in your marketing strategy, you then have a system to integrate into your individual activities that would help you gain better results for your business.

The point here is this: Don’t confuse your activities from your strategy. Focusing too much on the activities without a system to guide them will only be a waste of your time, money and effort. Whatever activity you decide to implement will always come up with lackluster results if not total failure. Create a system; plan a strategy. That’s the only way you can survive in the very competitive commercial industry.