My better half Lisa just ran a half marathon over the weekend on Whidbey Island in Washington (one of over 700 named islands off the coast). She’s never been much of a long distance runner, but what she did was smart. When she signed up for the run 6 months ago, she set a schedule for herself that slowly increased mileage. She set a series of easily attained milestones, then she put her head down and logged in the hours.

As a result, she finished feeling good. She accomplished a great goal. How? By breaking the pretty intimidating task of running 13 miles into bite-size pieces.

The same is true of marketing. It may seem intimidating, but if you come up with a solid marketing plan, break that plan into achievable bite-size milestones, and then execute, 9 times out of 10 you’ll reach a level of success. I’ve been good at doing that throughout my career, and that’s why I do make a decent living at marketing in the digital space. The first steps can be characterized as follows:

1. Understand your product or service.
2. Understand who this product or service provides value to, i.e. what is your demo?
3. Figure out ways to reach this demo in ways that are efficient.

Looks easy on paper, but we all know that even #1 can be a real challenge. Identifying product and associated product value isn’t easy, nor is then targeting the appropriate demo with messages that sell . I’ve had a hell of a time for example executing some of my Bite Size Pieces (Ad Sense, Ad Words, Twitter, etc). But if you keep at it, you will get there.

If you keep at it. That’s the secret.