How you market your company, your product and your brand makes all the difference to your bottom line. Everything you use to get the word out: advertising flyers, marketing brochures, billboards, television ads, etc. must be effective in telling people what your brand's personality is and what's special about your product.

The key to a successful marketing campaign is choosing the right weapons, or marketing tactics, that work best for you. Be it brochure printing or sending out e-mails, you need to use what works for you; not what worked for your neighboring business.

To gather your arsenal, you need to start a list of what works for you. For instance, the father of guerrilla marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, has his own list of 10 marketing weapons:

Marketing plan Benefits list Passion Community involvement Fusion marketing (strategic alliances) Follow-up Customer research Online marketing A designated guerrilla marketer Customer satisfaction

Notice that most of these tactics are low-cost or no-cost. No one said successful marketing had to be expensive!

You can use Levinson's list to come up with ideas for your own. You don't have to employ all these tactics at once - you can pick two or three to use in combination with each other for six months or a year and then evaluate your efforts. If you didn't get great results, try another combination.

There are also different tactics within these categories: for instance, to follow-up with customers, you can send advertising flyers or full color brochures, or you can call or e-mail them.

The way to identify your marketing weapons list is to decide what your target markets react to and what benefits they want. Here's a brief checklist of the steps to take to market effectively: 1. Brainstorm weapons that might be applicable to your markets and business. 2. Determine their costs (time and money). 3. Prioritize. 4. Determine what you can afford emotionally and financially. 5. Use the tactics you afford properly.

If you can't afford full color brochures right now, put those on the backburner or explore black-and-white brochure printing options. Create a marketing calendar of which tactic you want to try when, and then evaluate what worked and what didn't. Then adjust your calendar accordingly. Mailing marketing brochures didn't work in the summer? Try mailing them again in the winter or try handing them out instead of mailing them in the summer months.

By planning what weapons you want to use, and having back-up ideas ready to go in your arsenal, you'll be ready to change as the market conditions change. Being flexible is a big part of successful marketing. The goal of marketing is to get your message out to prospects and to gain recognition. By employing different marketing weapons during the year, you'll have a good chance of hitting everyone in your target market and no one will get tired of seeing your materials because you present them in so many ways.