The Real Secret to Successful Marketing

(image courtesy of pixabay.com)

INTRODUCTION

As marketers, we’re constantly bombarded with texts, posts, blogs, articles, journals, books, websites and every other form of communication, promising to tell us the “secret” of successful marketing. In fact, so many articles have been written and books published that a cottage industry has developed out of promoting this single topic. Many careers have even been made, all based on the promise of telling you the “secret” behind successful marketing.

The only problem is, none of them really work.

It’s true.

In spite of that, and although we’ve become more and more jaded to any promises or guarantees, we still continue to believe that maybe, just maybe, there may be some hidden nugget of information in the next article that will really transform our marketing and make it more successful. So we continue to hope…

You would think that after all of the column inches that have been devoted to the topic of successful marketing over the last several decades, and especially when you consider the number of industry luminaries, marketing leaders, and marketing practitioners of all sorts that have written about the topic, that at least one of them would have gotten it right.

Believe it or not, that hasn’t happened. At least not yet.

WHAT MAKES THIS ARTICLE DIFFERENT?

If you’ve read this far, then you’ve suspended your disbelief long enough to ask what makes this article any different than the hundreds or thousands of others that have previously been written on this same topic. The answer is that I’m actually going to tell you the truth.

In fact, that’s why I’m writing this article, to let you know the real secret so that if you implement it, you will actually see your marketing become more successful.

Okay then, so what is the real secret?

THE REAL SECRET

It’s simple. The answer to what makes marketing successful is summed up in two words: Hard Work.

That’s it.

In other words, the real “secret” is that there really is no secret. There’s no magic formula or technology or strategy or tactic that will automatically make your marketing more successful simply by purchasing it, installing it, using it or adopting it.

It all comes down to plain old hard work.

THE “SECRET” = HARD WORK which leads to SUCCESSFUL MARKETING

This means that when you plan any marketing, of any sort, before you actually begin to move forward there are certain actions you must take and specific information you must know.

You must know what the specific business goals and objectives are. You must know what exactly you’re trying to accomplish with your marketing. You must know what metrics to track to accurately measure your marketing so that you can see what works (or what doesn’t).

You have to know your product, your customer, your market and your competition. You must know what your product does (or maybe doesn’t do) and why/how it is better/worse/different than the competition.

You must know your customer, his business, his product, his competitors, his market. More importantly, you must know what your customer really wants, i.e., what the real pain point or issue is that he is trying to solve and how your product can help him. You must know what methods and channel(s) your customer uses to do research and gather information (print, online, etc.), along with knowing in what format he prefers to receive that information, how often does he want to want to be communicated with and in what format (phone, online, in person, email, text, etc.).

You must also be willing to make changes to your marketing if necessary (and trust me, no marketing works perfectly the first time out of the gate so changes will be necessary).

Even if you do all of the above, there is no guarantee that your marketing will be successful, which is why there is still one final piece to the puzzle.

And that piece is…, you have to keep on keeping on.

That means if something doesn’t work, you try something else. And if that doesn’t work, then you try something else. Again. And you keep at it until you find out what works and what doesn’t. You learn from your experience, your mistakes and your missteps and you continue to move forward.

Marketing, like any other profession, requires hard work and perseverance in order to be successful.

SUMMARY

So in other words, the only “secret” to successful marketing is that it takes hard work and perseverance.

That’s it. That’s really all there is to it. There are not any shortcuts, tricks, tips or secrets of any sort to successful marketing. There’s only Hard Work.

NOTE: The author specifically does not define the term “successful” because depending on the business requirements, for any given marketing activity there are numerous outcomes that may be deemed “successful”.

© 2018 – Richard Hatheway, Catalyst Strategic Marketing

All Rights Reserved.