Jerry owns a bakery and wants new customers. After the first quarter, he takes down his sign, stops all ads and doesn’t send any follow-ups to customers who have tried his pastries. He’s shocked when business stops trickling in.

This might sound like a poor strategy, but it reflects what many entrepreneurs and marketers do when they make marketing pushes in short campaigns rather than stick to a consistent strategy year-round to continually engage customers.

While a “campaign” mentality can help your marketing team organize its efforts, adopting a long-term strategy is far superior for a number of reasons.

1. It can take seven to 13 touch points to convince customers to buy.

These figures might sound high but obtaining a high-quality lead takes time. Developing an integrated marketing strategy and keeping it running is crucial if you want to build and maintain interest in your product or service. From the initial ad or email impression to the final follow-up and close, you can’t stop marketing.

2. Short tests provide bad data.

Most campaigns can’t provide the level of insight you want in a short amount of time. If you want to learn what works and what doesn’t, don’t stop your marketing efforts because the leads aren’t immediately pouring in. Instead, tweak your efforts over time to enhance performance. Better yet, run various A/B tests to home in on the perfect marketing messages.

Read the full article here. Lead image via Flickr.