Home Improvements Are Like Marketing Plans

Recently I volunteered to paint the inside of my house. It’s been 10 years since we remodeled the interior and moved in so it was time for a fresh coat of paint. My wife wisely said she wanted nothing to do with painting the house, and volunteered to get three estimates. The first contractor failed to show up. The second quoted five grand. And the third quoted eight grand. Based on my calculations the material cost was only about $1,500 so I figured we could save a bunch of money if I did the work myself.

First of all, I’m an idiot for volunteering to paint the inside of my house all by myself, and second, now that I’m halfway through the process, I’ve realized that home improvements are a lot like marketing plans. The big picture objective seems simple enough, but the devil is always in the details.

The first devil reared its ugly head in the form of peeling paint. You might think some simple scraping and spackling would do the trick, but you would be wrong. First, a really small area of peeling paint becomes a really big area of formerly painted ceiling now chiseled away – in some places down to the drywall and in others deeply gouged requiring more spackle than can effective cover the area and dry in one coat. Not to mention the formerly textured ceiling, finally smooth after several attempts at repair, not only needs a new coat of “orange peel” texture, but the appropriate product comes in an aerosol can with no less than four different settings to get the coverage just right.

So how can this miserable process be anything like a marketing plan, you ask? Great question! Let me attempt to explain.

Marketing plans usually start with fairly straight-forward objectives like increase sales, or generate more qualified sales leads, or drive more traffic to your website. However, the devil is in the details, and it rears its head in the form of a clearly defined target audience, or having an established process for tracking leads and sales, or even having a marketing budget to address the need.

Without the time, money, and effort required to address the details, it doesn’t matter how simple the goal is. It’s just not going to get done.

Much like home improvements, marketing plans require the long view. There will inevitably be multiple trips to the store. At times you will be frustrated, exhausted, and fed up with the process. But ultimately it’s simply a matter of staying focused and not giving up.

Until next week,

Matthew Anderson, President
Milestone Marketing Associates, Inc.