You know I am unofficially an Electronics Engineer. I dont have my degree yet but I can build just about any kind of electronic gadget you want. One thing I have to do for the university this year is design from scratch a wireless LAN for a school. Thats pretty tame compared to most of the stuff we do but it got me reading my network design manuals.
This brought me to the concept of top down vs bottom up design. This principle which I will explain applies to internet marketing also.
For example lets say you are designing a new marketing project. A top down design will first look at the market. Begining with basic research into finding a good market with high demand. It will address the markets needs and drill right down to the needs and interests (psychology) of individuals in targeted niches.
Only then will various avenues be examined for communicating with that market and finally an assessment of tools and expenditure required to implement the plan. So top down starts with “the big picture” ie “THE MARKET”.
Bottom up on the other hand looks at “YOU” the marketer. What your interests are, what you are good at, how much cash you have to spend, who can help you. From there you select an appropriate market and niches and assess what marketing plan you should implement.
I believe that most newbies and bootstrappers are doing “bottom up” marketing. Thats why many people rush from course to ebook trying to find someting that will connect them with a market, often any market. They are looking for the secret to success.
In designing a top down network you first find out what applications the users need, how much bandwidth they want, what are the future plans and requirements. Thats analoguous to market research for a marketing project. Its widely held in the engineering community that “top down” design is the best approach.
A bottom up approach looks at what network they have now, the hardware they allready use and it basically puts restraint’s or bottleneck’s on what can be done at the higher levels. So it is with your marketing plan. If you are saying I only have X amount of capital and I only have XYZ skillset then you are limiting the potential of your project from day one.
Capital and skill can be leveraged. They should not be the primary focus of your planning. The market itself and its psychology is the most important thing. Thats where you must begin to design a “top down” marketing project.
