Marketing gets a bad rap.
But that’s because most marketing is bad.
Following are a collection of concepts to help you think differently about how to spread your message, connect to your customers, and make an impact.
1. Marketing is storytelling and the most interesting stories are true.
2. Marketing is the art of making people believe in possibility.
3. The best marketing strategy is to create a great product.
4. Customers are not as smart or dumb as marketers think.
5. Scared marketers become failed marketers.
6. You can buy exposure, but you can’t buy attention.
7. If you interrupt someone with a marketing message, it better be more interesting than the thing you interrupted.
8. To learn how to capture an audience’s attention, notice how someone captures yours.
(Btw, For The Interested will show you how to capture attention.)
9. The more your marketing sounds like marketing, the worse it will perform.
10. The most valuable marketing can’t be bought — it can only be earned.
11. You don’t need a big budget, you need a big story.
12. If you master marketing principles, you don’t need to master marketing tactics because you’ll be able to invent your own.
13. Great content and great marketing are the same thing.
14. Your marketing message doesn’t matter if people don’t believe it.
15. The difference between marketing and sales is focus: The former focuses on the customer and the latter on the company.
16. The market is the ultimate judge of your marketing.
17. You can’t have marketing hits without marketing misses.
18. Marketing doesn’t sell a product, it connects you to a customer.
19. Discounts are the white flags of marketing.
20. You can’t market to people you don’t understand.
21. The enjoyment you get from marketing is a reflection of the confidence you have in the product.
22. Smart marketers study what other marketers do…and do something different.
23. “More” is a terrible marketing strategy.
24. It’s never been harder to market something, but it’s also never been easier.
25. The secret to marketing isn’t to know how to rank well in search engines, it’s to know why people search for those terms.
26. Word of mouth marketing always happens — it’s just not always the words you want.
27. Confusion is marketing’s nemesis.
28. Marketing is a way to show people what’s possible.
(Btw, you can also see what’s possible in This Is How I Do It.)
29. It’s easier to make things people want than to make people want things.
30. You can’t market something unless you understand why it exists and who it’s for.
31. There’s no marketing without repetition.
32. PR isn’t marketing — it’s an attempt to outsource your marketing.
33. Email marketing represents the best and worst of what marketing can be.
34. Don’t market on channels you don’t use yourself because you won’t understand why people use them.
35. Marketing’s more effective as a conversation than a lecture.
36. Not enough marketing strategies are strategic.
37. Marketing is connection.
38. The better the artist, the better the marketer.
39. If 1% of people in the world connect with your message you’ll have the most successful marketing campaign of all time.
40. Marketing has a marketing problem.
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