Here is a clever product that bypasses brand loyalty and targets the impulse buyer. Just put near the cash register and watch out when a chocoholic spots it - there is no resisting. "I want chocolate, and I want it now!"

There seems to be an epidemic of marketing emergencies.

I recently got a call from new client with a marketing emergency. They hired a new sales team, but didn’t have any sales support materials for them – no brochures, no product data information, no nothing.

And guess what else they don’t have – no marketing plan. They had no specifics on what they want their marketing to achieve – only the ambiguous notion to sell more.

Without a marketing plan, we didn’t know who their target audience was, or the reasons they buy. We also didn’t know the key benefits the company provided, or what made them different from their competitors.

So what did we do? We guessed! We guessed what the benefits the company provides. We guessed why customers buy from this company. I hope we guessed right or a few months from now, there is going to be another marketing emergency.

Guessing in marketing inevitably leads to mistakes – costing you time, money and momentum!

A few wrong guesses and this company will have wasted a lot of money—much more than the cost of developing a strategic marketing plan that could have mapped out an effective long-term strategic and tactical direction to provide more stability in their marketing efforts, with a lot less stress. This would cut down dramatically on costly and ineffective marketing emergencies.

Seth Godin, the renowned business author and blogger, once said, “Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.”

Some people seem to thrive on creating stressful work environments and juggling multiple emergencies at once. There’s an adrenaline high in this kind of business management. However, this is like playing Russian roulette–one day, the bullet is going to be in the chamber when you pull the trigger… I wonder if they consider being unemployed as less stressful?