Regardless, when I look at a marketing strategy, we always focus on five areas:

• Does this plan make good business sense?
• Where is the money being spent?
• Is there enough information to guide actions and implementation?
• How will it help drive the business objectives?
• What's missing?

If you, are about to design your marketing strategy (or if you've just designed it), ask yourself the following high-level questions to help craft the best strategy for your business.

1. What are our revenue goals?
2. How and when do we plan to achieve them?
3. What is our realistic potential for improvement in our current marketing and sales process?
4. Where does all of our current business come from? Where did it originally come from?
5. How should we go about improving our marketing and sales results?
6. How much should (or must) we invest to reach or exceed our expected results?
7. Which tactical activities are likely to provide the best results?
8. What has and has not worked for us in the past?
9. What are our competitors doing? What has and has not worked for them in the past?
10. What are companies outside of our specific industry doing for marketing and sales, and what has and has not worked for them?
11. What is the best mix of tactics for our firm to use specifically for lead generation?
12. How do the tactics in our marketing mix each contribute to us reaching our revenue goals?
13. What kind of tactics and campaigns should we engage first, and what tactics should we test over a period of time?
14. With the tactics we choose, how do we make sure we implement them as well as we can? What implementation pitfalls must we avoid?
15. How do we set up a process to make sure we nurture demand within our target markets so we gain the most effectiveness over the long-term for our investments in marketing and sales?
16. Which marketing and sales tactics should we avoid altogether because they are unlikely to produce results?
17. How long might it take for results to materialize based on what assumptions?
18. How will we measure and improve results continuously over time?
19. Are our marketing and sales processes working together to produce the best results?
20. How do we get the most out of our internal staff regarding sales - tapping their energy and potential and helping them to be successful for themselves and for the firm?
21. Is there any low hanging fruit that we should immediately address to either fix glaring problems or get fast results?
22. If we achieve our revenue goals, how will it affect our business operations and ability to deliver at or above our current quality levels?
23. Finally, and possibly most important, 'Does everyone agree that we are headed to our revenue goal, and do we have commitment (vs. either compliance or lip-service agreement) from the team to do whatever they can to help us get there?'

These are not the only questions you should ask when building a marketing strategy. Indeed, by asking each question you will spur others from yourself and your colleagues. If you first ask the questions, and then do the research you need to get the answers, you'll have a compelling, implementable, and well-researched marketing strategy.