What Is The Number One Rule Of Marketing?

The #1 rule in marketing is to know who your ideal customer or prospect is.

Once you know them (building an avatar), you will understand where you need to market to them (platforms).

Then after you know the platforms and can build compelling offers you need to provide value along the customer journey.

Providing value at every touchpoint whether it’s an informative blog article or an infographic. Providing value is the #1 rule of marketing. 

Business leaders are investing heavily in advertising. Astute marketers produce returns from these investments measured in increased profitable sales.

Marketing focuses on delivering profit directly. Marketing doesn’t mean creativity or innovation. There’s nothing like imagery. There’s no tagline or advertisement copy.

Marketers are concerned about selling products with profitability. If you need to achieve profitable sales, you should follow these marketing rules.

Marketers often use too broad of a net when selecting targets. How do we reach our targeted audience?

Identify your audience based on the pain they face and speak their language.

Measure The Right Things

Many marketers worry about counting things (like open email rates or various analytics from websites) without connecting the dots to the metrics their CEO cares about.

And believe me, nothing will get you kicked out of the board room faster than reporting on how many “things” you’ve counted.

Marketing without measurement is the same as being sacked for the toughest things.

Generally speaking, this golden rule can be derived through organizational maturity (young businesses may have fewer revenues share than mature, profitable companies).

Keep things a little more specific with three or five metrics.

Use subcategories when you feel that this may not always be possible if you’re looking for a way to increase the cost of sales or acquire a new customer.

It’s possible to measure many things — try putting the metrics into three buckets.

By wrapping your head around the golden rules of marketing, you’ll create a solid plan.

Do Marketing Strategies That Defines Who You Are

“Safe marketing” is the most popular marketing method, and some businesses are afraid to try different marketing methods to achieve the same result.

They forget that they are taking risks in advertising that you can lose out on and the thousands viewed daily.

How can we reduce noise? Do marketing that defines your identity but does not restrict your business.

Offending others can vary between bold billboards or having an interesting FAQ page on your website.

Don’t offend a buyer by requesting their advocacy too soon.

This will vary by industry (e.g., professional services buyers are far more sensitive to this rule than buyers of fast-moving consumer goods).

Your Highest Performing Salespeople Are Free

Your customers are your top performers. The biggest statistic on the subject will probably not overwhelm you.

I’ll share the simplest statistics from Deloitte studies that show the importance of advocating:

Ninety-one percent of people are satisfied with their recommendations. Eighty-two percent want to make purchases from friends.

A 12% increase in advocacy could increase revenue by two times.

The effectiveness of convincing people of a decision by an advocate is double.

You’ve seen the evidence: your best customers, also known as advocates, are hands down your highest sales performers.

This is why the audience-focused marketer needs to steer away from one size fits all strategies and move toward targeting the most relevant buyers with the highest conversion probability.

Don't Be Afraid To Inform Your Customers

For small companies, word of mouth can make or break their business.

Even for a larger company, it pays to engage your customers regularly, so that you can keep them around, instead of having to acquire new customers constantly.

You’re offering a nifty product that has many valuable services to offer. Simply listing all your product’s features is a flimsy marketing error.

This tip comes most in handy when you’re launching a new product or service.

Making the client believe you can fix their pain is key. A1 Garage prides itself on its high-performance materials.

Instead, they focus on a garage door that provides security, which is customers’ main concern.

Another instance: In 2001, iPod hit gold with the slogan: “1000 songs in your pocket.”

It was convincing enough to where customers realized they could 1000s of songs all in one device.

Marketing Is Not About You And Never Will Be

Unless you are in the business of selling introductory provisions or lifesaving medicines, nobody needs your products.

As marketers, our job is to create desire and make people want to buy products.

Very few people can speak with authority about a product and let their enthusiasm and knowledge do the selling.

Lester Wunderman, the founder of Wunderman Advertising, revealed his experience when he reviewed a recent press release for his company.

But as Lester said, “If you make your buyer the subject of the sentence, they imagine themselves in the story, which makes them twice as likely to form a memory.”

He believes the buyers who take part in the story can see themselves as being in the story, increasing their chance of memory (which reminds me of the importance of the brand identity).

Developing A New Marketing Strategy

So what’s a marketer with a message to do?

Engage one audience, deliver one message, and craft one call to action.

If you want to rethink your marketing strategies, start by writing down the values your business stands for.

Then, look at your current marketing, and tweak things accordingly to ensure your marketing reflects those values.

A new marketing strategy backed by celebrity and designer partners, social media, and a “fan” first mentality has helped Crocs more than double its revenue to over $1 million.

What they say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

Use analysis, customers, professional associations, market research firms, journalists, celebrities, book authors anyone but you to reinforce your story.

A company’s ability to be unique in the customer’s mind makes the customer’s life a little simpler.

What Are Your Marketing Tactics?

Marketers grab people’s attention and get them interested in learning more about a product, service, or company to possibly make a purchase or do business with that company.

Over the years, marketing, like sales, has gotten a bad name due mainly to the past’s horrible, annoying marketing tactics.

Today’s marketers are taught to better empathize with their better-targeted audience.

The golden rule of doing to others as you’d have them do to you has become the new mantra in the marketing world.

This, however, doesn’t mean all marketers subscribe to this idealogy.

The marketing team jumpstart is getting prospective customers into the sales funnel.

While the sales department is often seen as the deal makers, the marketing team has the first interactions with prospective leads.

While email and text messaging are a good golden rule of marketing if done appropriately, they can also cause a campaign to fail miserably by driving prospects away and out of the sales cycle.

Making Profitable Sales

One call to action, whether you’re crafting an email marketing campaign, designing a print ad, or producing a video, you want your target audience to make one decision.

Otherwise, they become confused, and we all know how minds feel about complexity and confusion. Stick with one call to action (one simple command).

And make sure it’s easy to find and comprehend.

Trust in the simplicity and power of one call to action, and your marketing campaigns will prove much more successful.

Salespeople often cast too wide a net when choosing their target market. If you want your message to resonate — narrowcast (spreading a message to a select demographic).

Even though there are many shiny objects, new channels, and changing methodologies every day, the smartest brands in the world never lost focus.

To stay ahead of the game, keep things simple and ensure that your marketing efforts directly align with your consumer.

From awareness to purchase to the ongoing customer experience, you will immediately put your brand out ahead of the rest if you focus on your target audience.

Kennected's Take On Marketing

At Kennected, success is not about the money you bring home but the personal value to clients.

If you visit our site, we provide a number of products that solve one of the biggest pain points any business has — lead generation.

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