It was a windy morning and the leaves were falling to the ground. I heard some loud footsteps. I looked beyond ]]> This past Sunday I was up an hour early due to the “fall back” segment of the daylight savings ritual. While a bit aggravated, I was able to put the time to good use.

It was a windy morning and the leaves were falling to the ground. I heard some loud footsteps. I looked beyond the border fence of my yard and saw a family of deer walking through the woods. Amazing how well they blended into the background; much like camouflage. In the summer when everything is green, you never see deer. They stand out too well and change their migrating habits. They successfully adapt to the changing environment.

You are probably wondering what the point of this babble is. Well here you go; Successful marketers, like deer, must adapt to their environment to survive. If you think back ten years ago, the media environment was pretty simple. You ran some newspaper, TV, radio and maybe a billboard or two. That was called a media mix. Now you have all the niche plays online that can make a business owner crazy. You have social media marketing, mobile and text marketing, reputation management, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, streaming audio and video, online display advertising, etc.  How does one deal with this lunacy??

The environment has changed, you must adapt. Let’s me help with some real basic rules that should give you some sense of control.

The basic elements have not changed. You still need to know who your customer is. What are their basic demos? What do they like to do? Where do they come from? Who is your competition? How are you different from your competition? Answer the questions and now you can begin to have fun with this.

With the onslaught of advertising vehicles, you now have the opportunity to target them in ways you never dreamed of 10 years ago. You can send a text message directly to your customers, you can post a message everyday to your friends in social media, you can target ads specifically to your target demos and lifestyles with online display ads, you can create your own audio files or videos with today’s smartphones and send them to the general public. All on specific days and times. The opportunities are endless!!

So be like a deer. Adapt. Enbrace the new media environment. Get excited at what you now can do and look forward to the new inventions coming tomorrow.

Thank you for your time.