10 Words That Drive Marketing Success

The core of excellent marketing strategies can be boiled down to ten words:

1. Knowledge
2. Value
3. Perception
4. Communication
5. Frequency
6. Consistency
7. Service
8. Persistence
9. Relationships
10. Organized

Knowledge is the foundation of marketing. Knowledge of the customer. Knowledge of the market. Knowledge of competition. Knowledge of your product or service. Learn more. Research more. Study more. Acquire more. Talk to smart people. Hire smart people. Become a smart marketer.

Value happens when someone gets more than what they gave. Creating value at the customer level is where marketing finds success, certainly in the long run. Many would say in the short term as well. The products and services you provide simply must have a very positive impact (in some way) on the customers you plan to sell to. You don’t out compete competition, you create more value than they do. Produce great value for customers (in their minds) and give them a real reason to choose your company.

Perception means that not everyone sees the world exactly the way you do. In fact, as it relates to your own business, few – if any – will. Your perception of your business is distorted. What is key is how the customer (really) perceives your company. Not what they tell you, not what you think they think, but what they really believe. Great marketing understands that customer perception is the reality the company must work with / and improve.

Communication is the process of sharing ideas. You have ideas about your business and the solutions you bring to the marketplace. If everyone already knew these things, they would all be buying from you. So, you have an educational challenge, don’t you?! It’s about education, it’s about advertising, it’s about messaging, it’s about technology, it’s about genuine caring. A critical part of winning is helping customers “get it” about your business and why they should do business with you.

Frequency happens when you repeat your message. To win at marketing, you can’t just say it once in one way. Searching for the “holy grail” communication strategy rarely works. Great companies repeat their messages in many different ways. It takes more to get through to a market than you would think it would. Advertisers do a campaign. Salespeople follow up. Internet marketers use auto responders. Put yourself regularly in front of the customer. If customers are not regularly saying to you “gosh, I see you guys everywhere” then you aren’t doing your job. People forget; remind them.

Consistency means a regular effort with similar outcomes. It is building and sustaining momentum. If you have a restaurant, it’s not good enough to have a great night, if you follow it up with a dud. To build forward movement, it must be great all the time. The drag about business is that people will always remember the one time you mess up, but will forget the ten times you did it well. That’s human nature. So you must have (almost insanely) high standards. Consistency pays in the communications approach, as it helps lead to the frequency we talked about in the last paragraph.

Service means making customers happy. It means having an attitude that demands a great outcome for customers. It means getting into the details and delivering on the promises you make. When you serve customers really well, it leads to an upward spiral of business. Customers return time and time again and they bring their friends. Bad service leads to the same momentum, but in the opposite direction. A commitment to service also inspires your team, which further fuels the positive progressions. You win when you genuinely serve.

Persistence means sticking with it, even when it is not easy. It never is simple to win in business. Being great means having the dedication to battle through temporary setbacks and disappointments. Part of marketing success is staying in the game and learning over the course of time. Marketing will test you – not just your business knowledge, but you at your core. Good marketing has – and its people have - amazing “stick-to-itiveness.”

Relationships require making genuine connections with other people and organizations. Great companies build huge, loyal customer bases by entering into genuine, mutually beneficial relationships. Dumb companies try to manipulate those relationships, which might work temporarily, but not over the long haul. Build a foundation and be a company that people want to work with for years to come. In addition to customers, relationships serve marketers in other ways as well …. Relationships with distribution partners, media, vendors, sales reps, employees, and others. Often marketing requires a multifaceted effort with lots of people involved. The better the relationships with your entire team, the better the relationships will tend to be in with customers.

Organized is necessary to pull it all together. I thought about “planning”, but really planning is there to simply organize the effort. There are a lot of moving parts. And slight improvements in performance often lead to significant results. In some instances, simply the sheer volume of things you do to win in the market drives success. Regardless, it is isn’t easy and there are a thousand opportunities to win or lose. Getting organized around it often separates the winners and the losers.

Had this article been the ONE word about marketing, I would have selected CUSTOMER. Obviously, the ten words above all come together to create success with customers, and in my book, that is MARKETING!