For a business or a marketer to use some of the topics brought up by Cohen in his book, they need to understand a few things about each. When he, or we, speak of things such as war, strategy, planning, winning, etc., we have a perspective that is shaped by our own history. Ideas of what these mean - cemented in military imperatives, but underlying each term is a fundamentally human endeavor that transcends any particular profession. The ends, ways, and means may seem different and unique on the surface, but those underlying fundamentals are the same - an important premise of War Is My Business.

We will specifically look at those six guidelines that Cohen developed, and I will rewrite and discuss them as if they were guidelines written for marketers and their businesses. In this way, you will see those fundamentals begin to surface.

1)Understand your market for what it is, not what you wish it to be.

War, and military operations other than war (MOOTW), involves the threat and use of force against an adversary in order to compel them to your will. The nature of the environment in which war is conducted will dictate how the means and ways come together to produce results. While the variables cause complexity that creates uncertainty in what consequences may occur, the study of those variables - their causal relationships - will help reduce that uncertainty.

Similarly, a market is an environment in which marketers utilize various means and ways in order to influence an audience to execute their will. The nature of the market environment will dictate how effective ways and means (types of adverts, promotions, CRM, etc.) utilized to produce your desired results - a sale, an engagement, or gathering of contact information, to name a few.

But just as we shouldn't try to utilize military force or conduct warfare in a way that doesn't work towards a desired end, we also can't try to shape our business, or market its value, in a way that doesn't achieve our ends. For most businesses, we focus on marketing to our niches. We market to the needs and wants – the customers’ paint points - and shape an environment conducive to the desired response. Understanding your desired ends and analyzing the nature of your market will help you determine which means and ways work best. You can't act as if your market is something that it isn't because you prefer to engage different audiences or use different engagement methods.

2)Developing a marketing plan is important; being able to adapt is more important.

When you develop a marketing plan, you have to dig deep into where your target audience resides. Do they spend a decent amount of time on social media, and if they do, which platforms? If your audience is older, then it may provide you a better ROI to stick with traditional mediums - like print, radio, TV, or signage. If your audience is young, then you may need to continually keep yourself aware of new digital platforms as they can and may migrate to new ones every few years.

But the most important thing that the marketing plan provides you is the ability to act in a unified manner. To assess your market deeply so that if there are shifts in that market, you can begin to sense them and adapt your plan to what you are seeing. Without your plan, you wouldn't be in the thick of it to see how your engagements, your content, are being perceived. You wouldn't have the ability to gather metrics to which you can determine what you need to change in order to thrive later on.

3)You will want a quick ROI, but prepare for the long game if needed.

Marketing, for the most part, is a sunken cost that we can't get back. As a result, for our managers, owners, or even ourselves, we seek to see our marketing budget achieve a decent ROI in a relatively short time. That is because it is indeed a sunk cost, and we want to know if funding a particular campaign is worth the investment as soon as possible. That way we can cut it if we see it failing.

There are some markets and particular audiences; however, that will not provide a quick turnaround between initial engagement and the desired response. For these people, you will need to be prepared for continuous engagement. They will need to see the value of your offer through content and how you deal with current and potential customers and clients. You may need to even foster reviews from other satisfied customers and clients in order to build an aura of quality and excellence around your brand, and naturally, this is going to take some time. Prepare for that.

4)While engaging with your target market today, prepare for tomorrow's challenges.

There are handfuls of businesses that could have been said to be market leaders only to fail to adapt as the market shifted. Kodak and Blockbuster Video come to mind. They had well-established business models that made them profitable - Kodak had film, and Blockbuster had physical video and game rentals. As the markets shifted to digital cameras and mail-ordered and digital downloaded media, they started to suffer. Blockbuster is gone for all intent and purposes as a result of this, and Kodak allowed others to be frontrunners of digital cameras since their own digital camera was scrapped since it threatened their main income source: film.

Other companies saw the shift ahead of time, and some even led that shift. Netflix, who overthrew Blockbuster Video, made its mail-order video rental service somewhat obsolete by creating a Stream-on-demand service. Basically, for marketers, while you are looking at trying to solve your audience's pain points now, you need to pay attention to what their future issues might be with new ways to solve them - before someone else does that for you. Always work towards trying to “put yourself out of business” as Gary Vaynerchuk would say. For many, feedback from marketing and customer services will be the first trigger identifying a change in your market.

5)A well-developed marketing strategy matters; perseverance usually matters more.

This goes along the lines of preparing for the long game and focusing on constant engagements instead of the execution of a single campaign then counting your winnings. Needless to say, if your engagement plan is terrible, then persevering under that plan is unwise - it needs to change. In a situation in which there isn't much change to be allowed, however, then being persistent in your engagement will net you victory in the long-run. If by that time, your competition failed to be as persistent as you, then you will begin to take market share from them.

This would work for a business; however, we aren't necessarily trying to defeat our competition to such an extent that they cease to be viable companies, and we stand alone. For nations and their militaries, it is desirable to defeat adversaries so that only the state holds a monopoly over the ability to impose will through the use of force. In the economic sphere, however, countries generally prefer healthy competition and will employ anti-trust regulations to prevent or break up potential monopolies. That being said, out-willing your competition, so to speak, is still applicable given the conditions allow it.

6)A business can launch a marketing campaign; to win it, he or she must sustain management and stakeholder support.

Depending on the type of business, your marketing plan will need to get the initial support from your management to conduct it. Afterward, depending on whether they see an ROI or shifting brand recognition amongst the target audience, the stakeholders: employees, customers, shareholders, etc., - will themselves influence management, or management will act unilaterally, to continue or nix their support for your plan. Similar to how popular support, or the lack of it, can compel Congress to influence the war-making decisions of senior civilian and military leaders.

If your marketing plan requires support for the long-haul, you will need to stay engaged with your management and stakeholders in order to get their buy-in. If you suffer set-backs, they will need to know why, how it occurred, what you learned from it, and how you adjusted your execution to compensate. They understand that sometimes things don't go your way, but keeping them in the dark can have a negative influence on their perception of your capabilities. Constant engagement on your marketing operations, often simply in the form of metrics, your assessment of those metrics, and plans moving forward, will do well to sustain the support you need.