Being a total marketer requires one to cast a pretty wide net while seeking the latest information, tips, trends and techniques that may provide a competitive advantage to your company and its offers.

In the case of this author, I seek advice from sources as disparate as land and fisheries management groups, plus other governmental agencies and NGOs, university think tanks, major media outlets — and even a subdued hospitality blog — the list goes on and on...

For example, I found the “Four Walls Theory” elucidated by Jeffrey Summers on the Summers Hospitality Group website (www.shgww.com/archives/8138), to be a concise piece of advice for operators in any market segment — from his context as a restaurateur, to its applicability for adult websites, their owners and promoters.

According to Summers, his “Four Walls Theory” teaches that “the elements that contribute to a restaurant’s success or failure, exist within it’s own four walls and are totally in the operator’s control.”

This ownership of the choices you make can be a turning point for any business.

“You must take responsibility for the controllable factors within your restaurant,” Summers stated. “Outside factors such as competitors, economic conditions and the weather have nothing to do with your own success.”

“However, the major factors such as better experience, better hospitality and fun, are internal and are the only ones we really control,” he added.

Summers considers the theory as a step towards fighting the “Success Syndrome,” which he describes as “a constant reminder of the consequences that can occur when the guest is now longer your No. 1 priority.”

Moving away from blaming others for failures, declining sales and lack of progress, to accepting the responsibility for the goings on within our own four walls is the key to moving forward in 2012 and staying abreast (or even ahead of) your audience, making it priority No. 1, once again.

A group familiar to many webmasters, Alcoholics Anonymous, popularized a prayer that sums it up nicely: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference” — a prayer that should be posted in every developer and decision-makers’ office; to view while they study the confines of their own four walls — and the influence it has on their offerings.

Put it in your office and see if it makes a positive improvement.