Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don’t much care where.

The Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

The best of marketing strategies won’t help you get where you want to be if you don’t know where that is, exactly. Also, if you don’t have a destination in mind, how will you know when you’ve arrived there?

From the outset, you need to know where you’re going.

Start your journey by identifying what your business is. In one concise sentence, what is your company all about? In another sentence, who are your clients? (I hope you have a better business plan than this, but we can start here — and don’t go on until you have this purpose firmly fixed.)

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Once you know who you are, it’s easier to determine where you want to go. Which clients you invest time and energy with will be based on your business plan. Your marketing strategies will be determined by your business plan. In fact, all of your decisions will be in harmony with that plan.

If you are trying to attract local business your marketing approach will be different than if you are looking for a statewide or nationwide audience. Do you want to draw the 20somethings or the baby boomers?

Don’t allow yourself to be be distracted or diluted from your purpose. If you make the conscience decision to change that purpose, well, that’s a different matter.

Having a business plan doesn’t mean that you can’t ever change it — but you wouldn’t change it often or randomly like the disappearing and reappearing creature in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”