We want to follow up the recent tribute to Stephen Covey by sharing our thoughts about the 7 habits of highly effective marketers.
1. Treat the sales team like family. Generating leads and closing sales represent a joint mission. Like a family, the bonds should be deep, but sometimes disagreements arise. When that happens, maintain a healthy level of mutual respect and courtesy while sorting through the issues. Feel the love and sell more stuff.
2. Education is a lifelong process. Invest time and resources to improve skills and knowledge continually. The marketing environment is dynamic, so staying on top of the latest trends is critical. Don’t use busy schedules and tight budgets as excuses. A whole universe of cost-free resources is available on the Internet. Make time to utilize it.
3. Experiment without fear. Continuous cycles of testing, measuring and improving are a cultural norm in a progressive marketing environment. Take the time to experiment on a small scale before making big commitments (A/B testing). Become a process improvement fanatic. If you don’t do these things, you’ll waste time and money. You may also lose potential sales to competitors.
4. Decide with 80% facts and 20% intuition. Facts and hard evidence are wonderful, but sometimes facts just aren’t enough, possibly because they’re in short supply. On occasion you’ll need to trust your gut instinct when all choices seem equally compelling or repugnant. When the facts contradict your gut – and your gut has been right in the past – go with your gut. It’s no guarantee of success, but you’ll win more than you lose.
5. Define metrics first; then figure out how to collect them. Start with the result in mind and work backwards. Don’t let apparent resource or capability limitations drive your measurement choices. Think outside the box. Insist on doing things the right way. When you compromise on metrics, you undermine opportunities for improvement.
6. Content writers and graphic designers belong together. The bar has been raised: Pure textual content is not as attractive as it used to be. The most compelling pieces make extensive use of supplemental pictures and graphics. Often the process is sequential (someone writes; someone else adds visual elements). When writers and graphic artists work together on a content piece, the resulting synergy can be magical.
7. Leverage results to improve future outcomes. Seemingly unrelated campaigns sometimes have useful connections that are not obvious. Key lessons from a completed campaign can make a new and entirely separate campaign more effective. For example: If one theme from a Google AdWords campaign gets more traction than another, use the better theme in an unrelated email campaign to drive more click-throughs. The linkages are there, but you need to look for them because they are often subtle.
