If you are marketing a product, service, brand or company in 2018, the following are tips that can help you succeed. These ideas come from years of marketing experiences from B2B and B2C marketing everything from brownies to business software. The following is practical advice distilled from years of failures and successes.
Drink up.
- Spend more time defining a marketing challenge or problem. The crisper the definition, the more likely you are to solve your problem.
- Increase the amount you listen during meetings and decrease your talking. Most of us want to share our ideas, but if you aren’t listening to colleagues, you aren’t gaining fresh perspectives.
- Avoid doing “marketing stuff” like others. Don’t follow some general best practice of how to market. Best practices make you average. Do you want to be mediocre?
- Consider the incredible value of surprising a prospect with something they don’t expect that reinforces your message. Don’t say, do. Find a way to bring some wow to your early engagement with a customer, so they see you doing what you say you will do in the future.
- Stay focused. The more you dilute your efforts with more products or new markets, the less likely you will succeed anywhere. Be the expert in something and demonstrate depth.
- Find ways to help customers share news about you. If you can eliminate the work or friction involved in spreading the news about your brand, you increase customer’s willingness to share information with their friends and colleagues.
- Be helpful in your communications. No one wants to read long, boring newsletters. Provide simple, singular tips that might help your customers or clients solve a problem.
- When you come up a brilliant idea, work equally as hard to disprove its viability. That way, you’ll feel more confident that you have thought through the risks and challenges before you go to market. Assign someone the role of devil’s advocate, so you are blind-sided by your ideas.
- Communicate as directly as possible with your end customer. The stronger your direct relationship with customers, the higher chance you have to serve them and their needs. Feedback – good or bad, is gold.
- Use the phone. Stop hiding behind email. Call people and speak to them to make sure you are clear on what they need. If you have a membership club, talk to at least one member every day so you can stay connected to their needs. You can hear the disappointment in a customer’s voice -it is hard to understand it clearly in a survey or email.
- Be flexible. At some point, that new product’s flaws are apparent and pushing it uphill may be the wrong approach. Don’t be afraid to regroup, rethink and reimagine the idea. There is nothing worse than trying to market a product or service that you know is flawed. People won’t believe it if you know it is faulty.
- Plan time to daydream and wonder. Whether you work in marketing in a small to mid-sized business or are the owner, without scheduling some thinking time into your day, you will repress your curiosity. Don’t plan yourself so that you don’t have time to reconsider an approach, an idea or a strategy. Block time on your calendar to rethink a project you are investing in to help you double down or regroup. Thinking time fuels innovation.
- Help someone connect without expecting anything in return. Karma is a bitch. It comes around and can bite you in the butt. Be generous with your time and connections because it is the right thing to do. The most exceptional marketing professionals I know, do this with their full heart and soul as often as they can.
- Don’t market a product after you make it. Find an audience or community. Learn what this audience needs are and determine if you can provide something that serves them. You don’t market a product – you serve a community of people with a need.
- Study companies outside of your industry. If no one in your marketplace is doing something like offering a big, hairy guarantee – but others do it in other sectors, learn why. Find out if you can reimagine some marketing strategy or tactic from a non-competitive market.
- Keep thinking small. Create products and services that a few people are wildly in love with and stop worrying about the scale. First, find raving fans. Then, figure out how to help them spread the word. Then, think about getting a few more raving fans. The right customer can be worth one thousand indifferent customers who don’t care.
- Find brands you admire and study how they market themselves. There are marketing lessons to be learned by watching how companies behave. I recently discovered a bicycle company that allows you to test drive a bike for 365 days. They are so confident you’ll love their bike, which they offer you something no one else in their industry will do.
- Expand your network of sounding boards. I benefit from having friends, former colleagues and new connections who are willing to listen to an idea and give me honest feedback. They might help refocus my efforts or provide a little wind in my sail. Your network is a powerful ally if you when you are marketing your business, brand, products or services. Be generous, so your network wants to help you because you consistently offer to help them.
Here is a bonus marketing tip. Be grateful. Show gratitude and grace to those you work with and for all the blessings in your life.
Thank you for reading my blog and the kindness of sharing time with me and my ideas.
Happy New Year.
18 is a lucky number in Hebrew as it relates to the word chai – which mean – life. To learn more about this mystical number, click here.
Need marketing help in 2018, text me 919 720 0995 or jeffslater@themarketingsage.com
Photo by Pablo Guerrero on Unsplash
