Marketing is about giving your company the best possible chance of success. All other considerations are secondary. This means that elements like branding, corporate image, positioning and all those other industry buzz words are there to serve the ultimate aim, not obstruct it. The visible parts of your marketing effort – your brochures, website and so on – are important components, but they'll never work properly for you unless they focus on the central aim. And to do that can be surprisingly tricky.

Marketing works when the strategies that you use tie in with the way your company and your marketplace, actually operate. As obvious statements go this should be in the Olympic class, but we find that this is the most commonly neglected aspect of giving your company its best possible chance of success. Getting it right requires some clear thought and the willingness to change a few pre-conceived notions.

To be different and better has to be the aim; you have to identify exactly what your potential customers are looking for and then tailor your whole business – not just your marketing – to supplying it. We've found repeated cases where our new clients are working relentlessly at pushing the wrong buttons. This isn't because they don't know their marketplace; usually it's because they've fallen into the trap of doing things almost exactly as their competitors do.

When we work with you to create a marketing strategy we'll help you to question the way things have always been, often with startling results. We've found price-driven markets where the last thing the customer cares about is price – but price is all his suppliers are offering. We've come across companies who give away their unique advantages while they concentrate their selling efforts on something that their competition do equally well.

Don't let this lead you to think that we claim to understand your business better than you do. The success stories that prove the validity of a fresh approach have come from working in real partnership with clients who are ready to take a second look at what they do. The concepts and new strategies that have emerged weren't necessarily our idea. In fact in most cases we don't know whose idea they were. They're the result of an extended process of open minded consultation that has taught us all a great deal.

So before you go racing down the road to madness in a flurry of Websites, advertisements, brochures and press releases, take a moment to stop and think. Then use the next moment to call us, and see how it could all make more sense.