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The Ten Commandments of Successful Marketing

I’ll start off with a somewhat controversial declaration: Marketing Rules! Okay, maybe it’s not that controversial. What I mean by that is business is all about marketing when you break it down to the basics. Therefore, successful business is all about successful execution of the company’s marketing function. Don’t believe me? I can swap stories with you that illustrate millions of dollars of lost value for companies that have struggled with the marketing function.

A company can have strong financial managers and accountants, but without customers, for what will they account? Without revenues, what will your IT staff have to maintain? The same questions can be asked of the operations, legal and many executive functions. At the end of the day, a company is successful because it has customers that pay. Without customers, the projections crafted by your CFO and sold by your CEO mean nothing.

Before we launch into the list of marketing commandments, let’s define marketing.

In my view, the easiest way to define marketing is as everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers. To more easily remember these concepts, marketing is often described as The Four P’s:

• Product (the solution being sold)

• Placement (sales and distribution channels)

• Promotion (finding new prospects and compelling them to become customers)

• Price (pricing and positioning strategy)

In this way, marketing encompasses a number of important activities such as public and community relations, brand management, media planning and advertising, product development and positioning, pricing schemes, sales and distribution strategies and much more. It is important that your company agrees on a definition of marketing. If you don’t, you’ll find that many necessary jobs will go unattended to and many roles unfilled.

Now that we’ve defined marketing, let’s review some guidelines that I believe can help you market your services more successfully:

1. Thou shalt care -

The first rule is to care about meeting people’s needs. People don’t spend money to buy products. People spend money to alleviate a pain or avoid the likelihood of a painful situation. You have to care about that. This is the first and greatest commandment of marketing.

2. Thou shalt have a plan -

Write a marketing plan. Effective marketing campaigns just don’t happen. They are the result of diligent efforts from dedicated marketers.

3. (Unless You are Wal-mart or Dell) Thou shalt not compete on price -

By definition, there can be only one low-cost provider in any market. Therefore, if you can’t be that #1 provider, you are going to have to develop a new niche in which to be #1 and compete on something other than price. If you are the leader and can afford to compete on price, great! If not, play a different game.

4. Thou shalt practice integrated marketing communications -

Advertising is not marketing. Neither are public relations, community relations and direct sales. However, altogether, they each make up a critical part of a comprehensive marketing program. Smart marketers use an integrated approach.

5. Thou shalt execute your plan relentlessly -

Plans aren’t made for your bookshelf. After you write them, use them. Refuse to be a lazy marketer. Refer back to your plans from time to time to make sure that you are still on track.

6. Thou shalt not be boring -

the biggest risk is to take no risk at all. Some people consider this to be the greatest commandment of marketing.

7. Thou shalt not be cheap -

While marketing campaigns don’t always have to be expensive, sometimes you have to spend money. There is an old saying that goes like this: If you don’t advertise, nothing happens. I have learned the hard way just how true this is.

8. Thou shalt measure your efforts -

John Wanamaker said: “I know half of my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” A century later Al Ries said: “If half of John Wanamaker’s budget was wasted at the turn of the century, then three-fourths of the typical advertising budget is wasted today.” Invest time in figuring out how well your money performs when used in various ways.

9. Thou shalt know your customer -

You never know your customers as well as you think you do. You have to know who is buying your service. This might be a very different person from whom you are targeting. Your past experiences, while valuable, do not tell you everything that you need to know and are no substitute for thorough market research.

10. Thou shalt always interact with real customers -

How many marketing plans are devised in conference rooms by people who haven’t seen nor spoken to a “real” customer in years, if ever? Too many! Successful marketing is magical. Compelling people to part with their most precious resources (their time and their money) and give them to you is hard work. The successful marketer doesn’t get nearly enough respect, in my opinion, for accurately identifying a market need, developing a solution to fill it and effectively communicating the solution. I have not known a good marketing professional who didn’t spend time in the field with customers at least some of the time.

These are my commandments. I find that things work better when I make sure that my teams obey them. When we don’t, I am convinced that we pay a great price, even when we don’t realize it. What are your commandments for successful marketing? Write me; let me know, and I’ll share feedback from our readers in the future!

By Mark Anthony McCray, MBA