3 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers


You broke me. I’ve gone ahead and done it, written a “by the numbers” post. I want to see how many of you read it based on the title (testing, you know, it’s the right thing to do). And of course I’ll offer the requisite number of tips to make this useful.

The Lead Up

Marketers are saying the same things, talking at each other, not the clients

Because they’re always one, isn’t there?

Marketers on social media are funny. I can say this, I am one. We′re out there posting blogs, tweets, shares and more about the latest trends, stats, we’re pinning infographics that no one actually looks at for more than a minute, if that, because they take too long to load, aren’t printable, and we only need a stat or two to tweet anyway.

We seem to talk AT each other quite a bit, posting and re-posting the same content, or a variation of it. I think I read the same article 4 times last week, with different titles, from different people. It′s sad.

Telling people to be original does not make your reused content originalI saw this one guy who′s avatar says Be Original, but he posts stats from other places, quotes from other people, and articles from other companies. Turns out, even the image isn’t his.

It makes us all look bad. And by reposting stats and news bytes it makes it look like marketing is a race to publish someone else’s content. How’s that being original?

So here they are:

3 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers

1. Produce original, useful, relevant content.

And stop using words like relevant. You are not talking to marketers, or marketers at agencies. You are ideally talking to people in companies who are in need of assistance. Help them. Give them information they can use, not vague rhetoric that makes you sound important. Tell them things like:

  • Connect with your audience by giving them information that they can use in their every day life.
  • Stop telling them to come in and ask for help. Promote solutions directly to them, don’t make them search for it. You can make them click through to your site to get information, but don’t give them general info and say come here and find everything you’re looking for. Time is scarce. Respect their time.

2. Provide them benchmarks to compare their marketing efforts

This allows prospects the chance to see if they even need help in the first place. Things like:

  • ROI analysis forms. This isn’t tough, you can do up a quick sheet in a doc or xls file that shows them what costs to account for to determine their total cost per conversion
  • Explain what normal KPIs for a tactic is, what standard ones are searched on, and what those industry averages are. Include ones for their audiences (because it’s safe to assume that as a marketer, you ARE segmenting and targeting your own audiences so you would have their specific KPI benchmarks available, right?!)

3. Back it Up, Eat Your Own Dog Food

I don’t care what your client tells you they want from you, they want more sales. Tell them what you can give them. Use standard benchmarks to give estimates, and stick to them, providing discounts if not met, or what you’ll do for them if for some reason you can’t deliver on what you’re selling.

You’re in business, you’re a marketer, deliver. That’s your job.