It’s time to look forward to the opportunities of 2019. Here are some suggestions for tuning up your marketing strategy.


1 |  Resolve to focus your marketing on help, not hype.

Customers believe and appreciate help. They look forward to it. As for hype, they tune it out and soon ignore you.

2 | Focuse your marketing message on meeting the needs of your customer, not on reminding yourself how great your are.

Our favorite Finnish professor, the late Osmo Wiio, said, “If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails.” Stated another way: Great marketing is helping your customer meet a need, not reminding yourself how great you are.

3 | Always fall in love with your customer’s problem rather than your company’s solution.

Your customer’s problem is always evolving. Your product, service and marketing message should evolve with it.

4 | View your brand as a village of friendly people who love to share stories. Don’t think of your brand as a soap box and megaphone.

Your brand should be a story that never ends. While the correct logo, slogan, mission statement and corporate design standards all reflect who you are and what you stand for, your stories are what keep your organization relevant to its workers and customers. It’s what creates a brand that is fresh and new far into the future.

5 | Never confuse the lowest price with the best value.

Perhaps you can sell generic pieces and parts, but great content that works is never a fill-in-the-blank commodity.

6 | Listen more, talk less.

The definitive expert on your product is someone who has just purchased it or one who has owned it for years. You should always view your marketing efforts through the eyes and experience of a customer.

7 | Don’t promise more than you can deliver. Instead, deliver more than you promise.

Make sure the train pulls out of the station when you promise it will. If you are doing things to slow down the departure, you are undermining the importance of the product itself.

8 | Don’t embrace new technology that your customers don’t use.

We live in an era where very few ideas stick. Let large companies or deep-pocketed venture capitalists plow through enormous amounts of money looking for new ideas. Put your toe in the water if you see something catching on in your industry niche, but don’t feel left behind if you take a wait-and-see approach to the latest trend.

9 | Be consistent. Consistency and timeliness are important, no matter what marketing strategy you follow. It often takes many attempts to get the perfect message in front of the perfect audience.

10 | Give the client credit for everything good.

Why? It’s the truth.

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