Before anything else, strategic marketing requires gathering and analyzing information. Before the doodling, before the brainstorming, before those fun, zany, finger-snapping “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” moments, we need to know more.

We ask a lot of questions. We do research. We might talk to your existing clients, past clients or even people who have chosen (gasp!) not to do business with you. We might check out your competition or delve deep into sections of your business plan. And believe it or not, we love every geeky minute of it.

You see, in order to craft the right message and deliver it to the right market, we have to know you and your customers. Sometimes the information confirms those initial gut instincts. More often, the information shines a bright light on things you’ve never considered or discovered about your own business.

Once we have a clear and accurate view of your business, we make a plan. We determine the best strategy and the best tactics for enacting it. We figure out how to maximize your investment. We plug stuff into process maps, make charts and crunch numbers.

And then we do the fun stuff.

We talk fast and scribble on whiteboards. We talk with our hands. We work our magic. We create an image. We design a campaign. We wow you with our brilliance and get you exclaiming about our creative genius.

But we’re not done. After all that excitement, we go back to our desks to monitor the results. We use metrics to help us improve your marketing’s effectiveness. We tweak, fine-tune, and expand on ideas based on the data we’re getting from the measurement tools we’ve built in to your campaign.

That’s how strategic marketing works. And it does work.