There are seven habits I observe about the marketing professionals I admire.
After recently rereading Steve Covey’s work on seven habits of highly effective people, I looked at his list from a marketer’s perspective. This list isn’t exhaustive, just my reflections.
What are the seven most important habits of a marketer?
THEY READ
Marketers, who don’t read, tend to be people who tend to get stuck in the same thought patterns. Marketers who do read want to understand and see the world from a different vantage point. They don’t just read marketing or business books – they tend to learn from a wide swath of material to educate and inform their approach to their work. They learn because they tend to be naturally curious people.
THEY WRITE
Marketers who are writing articles, blogs and books tend to take their ideas into the public domain. They share a point of view, a counterintuitive approach or some original observation. In writing about topics of interest, they try to solve problems and shine a light on how they arrived at their point of view so you can understand how they got from A to B. Writing helps them solve marketing challenges.
THEY LISTEN
I recently attended a conference where there were many marketing professionals. I watched one very well-known person sit quietly through the presentations, and you could see their brain thinking away. They were attentive to the conversation in front of them and not distracted by the email, texts, and tweets that interrupt most of us all day long. They were present and ready to learn.
Great Marketers Act Like Verbs
THEY ACT
Another way to say this is that they take action. They do something with the insights they have, and they bring it to the marketplace They don’t just write about it. Great marketers act like verbs – in motion, not like nouns that are static. Their instincts are to act once an ideas or direction starts to form. The DNA of these individuals is replete with forwarding motion.
THEY TEST
Marketing professionals love to talk about A/B testing for everything. How can I set up real-world experiments to see how two competing approaches do in real life test? They want to find better tactics to solve a strategic problem, and they want to do it in the real world, not on a whiteboard in a conference room. They run many small experiments to find incremental returns.
THEY MOTIVATE
Motivating a team or staff isn’t easy. How can you both get out of the way and manage people to do their best work? Not an easy challenge. But the best marketing pros have a positive, upbeat view of how to move things along although it might come out as a quiet strength or with a resounding roar. But they understand that to get significant work done they have to motivate others toward solving problems and achieving results that seemed impossible just months before the task began. Great marketers also need to inspire and to allow people to fail without fear of taking risks.
THEY APPRECIATE
They recognize that talking about their accomplishments is unproductive and useless. Only someone else can comment on the work you do – but you must find ways to acknowledge the work of others. Appreciation can fuel and motivate a team. Marketers, like other business professionals, want those ‘high fives’ to help them know that their work is appreciated. Giving feedback to your marketing colleagues is a way of putting fuel in their motivation tanks.
That’s my list of seven. I’m sure you can think of many more. Please add your ideas to the comments below.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Could you use a marketing coach to help guide your growth? You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Try my new chat feature on my site if you have a quick question.
