​Simplify your marketing by sticking to the basics

​Simplify your marketing by sticking to the basics

When planning a marketing project it’s best to stick with the fundamentals.

Here are our acronyms for keeping the basics in the forefront: OAR and MTV.

O = Objective

What’s the measurable objective of the effort? For example, “Sell 100 label printers per month in Mexico” — not, “increase the marketplace’s mindshare.” There must be a tracking mechanism in place. It could be as simple as asking, “How did you find out about us?” and making tick marks on a form. You could also enter it into a customer relationship management system.

A = Analysis

What’s the financial impact of achieving the objective on gross margin or pre-tax profit?


If you know the financial impact of achieving the objective, you can determine how much you are willing to invest in the effort and calculate the estimated return on investment.

M = Message

Why should anyone care that you are in business? What’s the message that must be delivered? It’s good to get some outside help with this, because if you analyze yourself you appear average. Someone who is not burdened by intimate knowledge of your organization can discover the message faster than you can.

We take our clients through the “what do you do for a living” exercise. Any organization’s message can be described in ten words or less.

T = Target

Who should get the message? There are usually primary and secondary targets. Prepare to be surprised by how the message is or is not acted-upon by your targets.

V = Vehicle

Have everything on the table. Skywriting, billboards and promotional products can be effective. Trackable media is best.

Joe Scott is vice president of Scott & Associates, based in the southwestern suburbs of Minneapolis. When asked what he does for a living he says, "I get customers for our clients." How he does that is via the OAR / MTV process, which = Objectives, Analysis, ROI / Message, Target, Vehicle. When not doing that sort of thing, he can be found with friends and family, on a golf course or a football pitch, sometimes more than one of them simultaneously.
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