I once heard marketing professional Adam Urbanski use the phrase “opt and dropped” to describe the haphazard marketing approach taken by many service professionals. It’s both a memorable and apropos term.

Opt and dropped happens when you run a newspaper ad for a few weeks and, when response isn’t what you hoped, you stop. Opt and dropped happens when you start a business blog, write for a few months, and let the blog die a quiet death when clients aren’t jamming your phone lines. Opt and dropped happens when you build a website, put it up, and generally forget about it.

Like so many things, healthy and effective marketing strategies need to be given a real chance to work. That means putting serious forethought into them and making sure that each individual piece of your strategy contributes to your overall approach and goals. And it means running with the strategy for a legitimately effective stretch of time.

How do you avoid the “opt and dropped” trap? Share them in the comment box below!

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.Lenski.com.