The Golden Rules of Marketing

The Golden Rules of Marketing

“Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” This phrase is as familiar as their own names to most people. Being mindful of the “Golden Rule” serves each of us well as we go through our day-to-day. It works well for marketers too. After all, the common-sense approach is almost always the best way to go when promoting goods and services. Of course, marketing also involves a number of more subtle nuances. To accommodate those, here are the golden rules of marketing.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Focus groups and surveys can help you learn who people think they are and how they want to be perceived. But when it comes to marketing, what they do is way more important than what they say. So, even while you’re soliciting customer responses to get an idea of how well a particular campaign might perform, perform some statistical analyses to determine actual customer behavior before committing your resources.

Sizzle Sells Steak

While features are nice points of reference, you have to touch emotions if you want prospects to engage. The first question people ask (even if only subliminally) when they encounter a new product or service is; “What’s in this for me?” Let’s say your goal is to sell ebooks online. You can list the features of a given title for days, but if you don’t connect those features to a benefit capable of addressing a particular problem, desire or concern, your words will meet blind eyes.

People Want to “Belong”

Whether we care to admit it or not, human beings are tribal by nature. People are always looking for an opportunity to fit in somewhere, so they can feel like they’re part of something larger than themselves. When you make a conscious effort to interject your personality into your marketing efforts, you will attract some people — just as surely as you will alienate others. The key is to know your ideal customer and do everything you can to make yourself relatable to them. You’ll experience far more success when you’re trying to be everything to someone than you ever will trying to be something to everyone.

Word of Mouth is The Best Advertising of All

You can hire the greatest copywriters the world has ever known and mount the most brilliantly conceived campaign ever crafted to promote the best product ever created in the history of our species and still fail miserably. Conversely, you can have the exact opposite in every regard and still be a runaway success if you get the right people to tell everyone you’re cool and the product you’re offering is worth having.

Why?

People are pretty much fed up with advertising. They don’t really trust it anymore, nor do they really pay attention to it. Meanwhile, word of mouth (also known as social proof) carries way more sway than Madison Avenue ever did—or ever will again. Your existing customers are your absolute best advertising media. Get them to tell people how cool you are; others will gladly follow them right into your fold.

Common Sense Isn’t Common

These all sound like common sense solutions— right?  Well, guess what? Common sense isn’t common. If it were, we’d all be marketing geniuses. Adapting your promotional model to embrace these golden rules of marketing will help you make a sizable impression upon your target audience. As a result, your eCommerce site will see considerably more traffic, which will give you far more opportunities to convert.

And ultimately, that’s what marketing is all about.

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