10 Commandments of Marketing – Principles to Accompany Your Marketing Habits

Sometimes it gets painfully boring hearing people talk about the ‘principles’ of marketing because it seems almost every book out there on marketing is soft, and un-actionable.

Meaning no one can really go do what the book says TODAY, with real next steps. 

Marketing strategy - is just the realm of bad consultants who want to hide in the arena that doesn’t test their metal. 

When you’re held to the fire like our marketing agency is on a day in and day out basis, fired for not producing leads – you get better.

You adjust your strategy, you find ways to improvise and change the strategy. When you just get to consult on the strategy and fly off to consult with the next company – where’s the accountability? 

Being that we take a ton of ACTION daily, I want to share the WHY behind the WHAT – these are what I think about constantly when continually tweaking our strategies and ensuring we're doing the right habits daily & weekly.

These MARKETING 10 COMMANDMENTS will offer flavor and context to get more out of the specific methods. Each has a nod to one or two amazing books that have made me the marketer I am today: 

1. Make your marketing obsessed with your ideal customer – say ‘you’ a lot and watch the tendency to make your marketing about your company. For more on this method, check out the book Storybrand.

2. Make your marketing about getting referrals not just about getting leads – You want people to be lining up at the door, for doing that – you need to find ways to pitch to many people at once, either through speaking or working with people that own your customer's attention. For more on this method, check out the book Oversubscribed. 

3. Learn how to attribute success from campaigns, and then double down on what’s working – Use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and social media platform analytics as well as your CRM to identify the specific places leads are coming from. Then 10X the activities that winning, and cut the ones that aren’t. For more on doubling down, check out 10x Rule.

4. Try to learn the specific methods yourself as much as possible before just handing things off – E-myth Revisited has helped popularize the idea that you need to turn your business into a ‘franchise mode’ with standard operating procedures, but you need to be a craftsman first – and marketing methods are part of that craft, and doing much of it yourself first will ensure it’s done right, and help you be profitable before you scale (profitable growth is more important than headcount.) For more on doing things yourself first to ensure profitability - check out Profit First. 

5. You have to differentiate the offering from the other offers on the market – To try to market something that’s a ‘commodity’ you’ll waste crazy amounts of time, money, and energy. Versus getting very clear on what you do that is wildly different from other competitors and making it dead obvious on every piece of marketing. For more on differentiating yourself in the market, read Purple Cow. For a great example of making your competitive advantage blatantly obvious, just look at the back of a U-haul truck! (Look for areas of the market that have less competition and niche into them) - This is just building on the previous point, but what could you add (or subtract) to your offering, to put it in a league of its own. How could you niche down further, or create a new category? For more on finding untapped niches, read Blue Ocean Strategy. 

6. Make a point to consistently define your ideal customer, make lists of them, and make sure your offering and language is always towards them, not fringe cases – where your language gets watered down and less pointed. The more you say no to non-ideal customers, the more you can delight your best customers. For more on defining your ideal customers and getting more business than you can handle – read Book Yourself Solid.

7. Find and consistently implement weekly habits – that are based on Quarterly goals that each person on the marketing team can commit to and have accountability around. - For more on quarterly systems and accountability - check out Traction. 

8. Always be looking at strategic partnerships and build into strategic customers to enhance your marketing, define and redefining your ideal customer, and push above and beyond on the best ones. For more on building a powerful set of core customers – check out The Pumpkin Plan. Pumpkin plan is more directed at services businesses – so much of it is about retaining and surprise & delight for strategic clients.

9. Understand your personal energy, find what energizes you (and your marketing team,) and with a blend what energizes you, & what you know is more effective than other methods – push into the ones that you feel naturally motivated to do For more on pushing into what energizes you - read Finding Flow and The Power of Full Engagement.

10. Clearly define your long term ideal scenarios on a regular basis, make sure you know what you’re aiming at – if you don’t have a clear vision you can’t hit it. - For more on visualization, affirmation, and mindset check out ‘Think and Grow Rich.’

These are in no particular order – but I hope you like them! Also – I will be sharing about each of these much more deeply in an upcoming book 101 Proven Ways to Hook Better Leads – in the second half of the book 'Principles of Marketing', this is just an introduction! I will also likely be giving summaries of each of these books in more detail as part of that.

Thank you for reading – and have a great day!