Habits: the great secret of marketing success
What do you think you need more than anything else to attract more of your ideal customers?
Many people will say “better information to show me how to do what works.”
Others will say, “more motivation and drive to implement what I already know.”
Another common answer is, “more time to put marketing activities on my schedule.”
And many people will say “I need better goals and more clarity about what I want to achieve.”
In writing this ezine / blog for the past 20 years, I have talked about the importance of all of them.
But I am finally understanding a factor that is much more important: good habits.
Over the past year, I was a great advocate for the writings of James Clear. Write a blog about success and habits. And he just published his first book, Atomic Habits, which is fantastic.
Although James is not an expert in marketing, I am convinced that he is correct when he says that the determining factor of success is the building of positive habits.
This idea is simple but true: Freelancers who establish regular marketing habits have a much higher chance of success than those who don’t.
And the crazy thing is that the four elements (information, motivation, time and objectives) that I mentioned earlier do not make a big difference.
Information. These days, we have access to more marketing information than ever before in history. And much of it is free and instantly available via a Google or YouTube search.
The problem is that most of us have not established a regular habit of studying what we need to know to become better marketers. The information is useless unless we are competent in its implementation.
And even if we pay good money for courses and programs, much of it goes to waste. I recently learned online that 97% of people who buy a course online never complete it.
Motivation. If we measure motivation by intention, we are all motivated. Don’t we all want and need to grow our businesses? But we keep getting distracted and we don’t fulfill our intentions. Again, the problem is bad habits.
Hour. If only we had more. But unsuccessful marketers have as much as successful marketers. The key is that they spend more time implementing common marketing habits.
Goals. There is nothing wrong with goals, except that they are just a starting point for success. And they can bog us down in the future, instead of doing what needs to be done today – the routine marketing habits we engage in every day or week.
“A habit or system always beats a goal.” – James Clear
The investigation is ready and the conclusion is clear.
Establishing positive and consistent marketing habits has a greater impact on marketing success than anything else.
We may have great information, a lot of motivation, a lot of time, and clear goals, but unless marketing activities are done on a regular and regular basis, the chances of success are slim or nil.
The question you should ask yourself is: “How do I start to establish better marketing garments?”
James’s Atomic Habits goes out of its way to share a multitude of ways to become an expert habit practitioner. So I suggest you get his book. It might be the most valuable “marketing” book you’ve ever read.
But let me also give you my perspective on what it takes to establish new marketing habits.
Model C – SPAT
This is a template that I came up with for one of my marketing programs.
Coaching or context. A coach declares the game, how it is played and how to win it. And this creates the context in which you play. It helps to have an outside source who can hold you accountable for following the rules necessary to be successful.
This principle is why when you work with a coach or on a program, you suddenly realize that it is easier to take action and form positive habits. The context of the game helps shape their behaviors.
Keep in mind that all professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants, go through rigorous training in the form of a vocational school and an internship. And in this context, professional habits and protocols are established.
As freelancers, we would all rather do things on our own, charting our own direction. That’s good, except it doesn’t always work very well, does it?
Study. A large part of the game is studying and learning the body of knowledge necessary to perform effectively. Again, the information you need to be an effective marketer is available, but you need help separating the wheat from the chaff and studying what is most useful.
Planning. All successful marketing needs a plan. The alternative is to implement random marketing activities with little structure and direction. So it’s not about how much you know, but how you put what you know into practice.
Action. Success doesn’t come from being busy or doing a lot of things, but from doing the right things at the right time. This is where establishing regular marketing habits comes in.
For some, it could be writing an article once or twice a week. For others, it may mean setting up more meetings with network contacts. Or you could be booking regular talks.
The secret to making this work is to leverage the first three steps of the model – training, studying, and planning – in marketing actions that you do as consistently as possible.
Tracing. What gets measured gets done. And when we fail to measure, habits don’t tend to stick around. When we measure and track habits, the chances that they will be performed consistently increase dramatically.
It may take some time to establish positive habits. You know that happened when you don’t even have to think about it anymore; just sit back and write that article every Monday or make five calls to potential clients each week.
And when you’re in action like this, you create a feedback loop, learning what works best and what doesn’t. This allows you to fine-tune and adjust over time until your marketing habits become more established.
So, stop paying so much attention to searching for the “perfect” marketing strategy, get motivated, find more time, and set goals.
Instead, use the C – SPAT approach to establish positive marketing habits.
Regards, Robert