Every business uses one or more of following tactics to attract clients; mailings, advertisements, phone calls, networking, promotional events, a web site and sending email. If you use any of these and aren’t attracting as many new clients as you want or making as much money as you’d like, problem may not be tactics. It's your marketing strategy that needs attention.

Without an effective marketing strategy you won't achieve results you want, no matter how much time and money you spend. A high profile radio ad campaign won’t help you grow your business unless it includes a message that attracts your prospects. An article about your firm in a newspaper can bring in business or just be a conversation piece. Email messages you send can end up in your prospects' delete bin or prompt them to contact you.

Mailings, radio advertisements or web sites are only delivery vehicles for your marketing message. They are tactics you use to implement your strategy. Are you using right strategy to market your business?

What are fundamental principles of your marketing strategy? If you can answer this question, you're among one percent of business owners who can. Most people think only about their marketing tactics or vehicles and wonder why their profits aren't growing as quickly as they would like.

Business-Building Marketing Strategy To grow your business you need to:

You will notice that I didn't add brochures to this list. Brochures are not a good investment for a first piece. When someone asks for a brochure and you don't have one, this doesn't mean you ignore their request. Worse scenario, you may run wildly around using up a large portion of your year’s marketing budget completing one.

If you move or update your materials frequently, it isn't wise to spend thousands of dollars on new material. Here are a few alternatives. You can use a professionally created folding business card as a main document. Another option to expensive letterhead is to print your own in a two-pass process. Use a color printer in first pass for your logo and use a black and white pass through for content. Use Kinko's if you don't have a color printer (http://www.kinkos.com). At Kinko’s you can send them a file via Internet, have them print color portion on high quality paper.

Mailing out a marketing piece weeks after your first contact is too late. When opportunity knocks, be ready. Timing is everything. If you don't, extra time allows them to solve issue on their own, or change its priority.

It is always preferable to have a serious phone discussion even before an in-person meeting. If they don't show up for call, it is easier to recoup your time, and it indicates they aren't ready to buy. All you need to do is follow-up lightly to remind them to contact you when time is right. Send them a newsletter, template letter, or flyer and not expensive material. People generally toss items they receive on first punch. Save best for a time when punch is more effective. Multi-follow-ups show them that you aren't a fly-by-night going-to-fad-in-the- next-few-months provider.

Giving too much information early in marketing process overwhelms customers and jeopardizes sale. It makes them nervous about you. This is, of course, if you are selling services or products worth more than whatever your market considers discretionary.

Instead, create a call to action to get them to visit your web site periodically, send them an "I'm still here for you when you are ready" note, or a printed copy of your latest newsletter or ezine.

Selling a product? Send an oversized post card or direct mail piece. The direct mail piece needs to use an "I'm- following-up" language and not a "you-never-met-us-yet" dialogue.

Have template letters, Word or Act, ready to go with a few clicks. Design them so first or second paragraphs are easy to add a personalized follow-up dialogue.

When you drive along same route and one day you spot something that seems new, only later discover it’s been there all along you are pleasantly surprised. For even when we seem fully awake, many things pass our radar. .

In marketing, it is same experience. We don't see something that’s been there until something happens and wakes us up. The seven-times rule, a proven marketing principle, is "you have demonstrated credibility" and "I now see you" model. The seven-time rule applies whether main marketing draw is a web site, networking, direct mail, or a combination. People who don't like to sell stop after first or second punch.