8 Marketing Habits of Highly Effective Businesses

If you haven’t read Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People you really should. I highly recommend the book. I just finished it again and thought I would tip my hat to Mr. Covey and give you some marketing pointers at the same time. All of Covey’s tips can apply quite well to your marketing habits, but I am going to give you a bonus marketing habit to keep with my 8 tips theme.

Be Proactive

Don’t just react to your situation, initiate action to accomplish your marketing. If you don’t start marketing, it won’t do it on its own. Doing something is better than wondering if marketing your business will help.

Begin with the End in Mind

Sit down, take some time and decide what you want to achieve. Write some goals for your marketing, define success. Once you have a clear goal for your marketing efforts the steps to achieving that goal become increasingly more clear.

Put First Things First

Prioritize your marketing and the steps needed to succeed. For instance if one your marketing goals is more website traffic, it would make sense to have a website that performs the job you need done. Make sure the tasks you work on are important, not just urgent.

Think Win Win

Create an overall marketing strategy that is Win Win. You obviously can make an offer where the customer would lose, they wouldn’t be customers for long. But make sure you win too. Offer your Perfect Customer something that meets a need or solves a problem at a reasonable price.

Seek First to Understand then to be Understood

Get to know your Perfect Customer, very well. Learn as much as you can about them. Then let them know that you understand their needs. Until you convince them that you know what they face everyday, they really don’t care about your facilities, experience or shiny new gadget.

Synergize

Synergy is two parties working together to create more than the sum of its parts. Basically it is 1+1=3 or 4 or 16. You can synergize your marketing with a number of parties. You could synergize with businesses that share the same customers, you could synergize with your vendors, you can even synergize with your customers. What do you think social media is all about?

Sharpen the Saw

Sharpening the saw is all about bettering you so that you can do the other habits. In marketing, sharpening your saw could be reading a couple of marketing books, or learning how to manage your own website, or even taking a class. By sharpening your marketing saw you make your work easier and the outcome is better.

Bonus Habit - Be Consistent

Whatever marketing tactics you decide to take on, be consistent. Don’t run one ad in your local paper and stop because it “didn’t work”. Whatever you try, keep doing it. Marketing is a journey, not a destination. So keep it up, it will pay off in the end.

Thank you Mr. Covey for inspiring me for this article and for my career. I do suggest you read 7 Habits but don’t miss applying them to your marketing as well. Work on employing these habits and you will see a dramatic improvement in your marketing as well as your ROI.