Making great marketing decisions

By Linda Julian

Like so much in life, success in marketing is largely about making good decisions.

Here's a useful framework to help you make smart marketing choices:

• define the problem
• specify your objective
• develop a range of alternative solutions/approaches
• work out the advantages, disadvantages, consequences, and impacts of each realistic alternative
• evaluate the options  -  what are the risks or trade-offs involved ?
• select the best option
• how can the downside risks be managed ?
• what other decisions are impacted by this ?
• what else do we need to do to make it work ?

By working through this decision making process, you'll improve your chances of making optimal choices about allocation of scarce marketing resources.