How do you do?

When something is your Thing you look at it from ‘your’ side–the side where you know how it works well, what to do to get the results, and usually the ‘easy way’. So when you’re putting together marketing material, you need to look from the ‘other’ side.

Blinkers give a single focus—they don’t pretend nothing else is happening, they just allow you to block it out to make it easy to look ahead only at where you’re going.

I need Blinkers sometimes (OK—all the time) as I am one of those creative types who has a million ideas a minute and would try and do all of them given half the chance. But you know what they say about Jack of all trades and that’s the same as being pulled in every direction you can think of, as you never actually get anywhere…

I am a huge fan of the Pareto Principle–and if you’ve worked with me for more than 5 minutes, you’ll know I’ll crowbar it into almost any situation!

I am a bit of a stuck record on this–do LESS types of marketing but do them MORE. Trying to do every type of Marketing you can think of is going to exhaust you (and your Marketing budget, too!). Unless you have a big team of marketers working for you trying to get every single type of marketing working, or a huge budget to spend with agencies, chances are you’ll be spreading yourself too thin and not getting the impact you want to.

Anything that gets you in front of the right people at the right time, with the right message that connects with them and they are in a position to take action, is good marketing (in the world of business according to me).

For me, it’s also about being consistent—consistent in your message and your communications.

We’re often discouraged from talking about money as it’s not good manners, and I’m still quite the fan of not ‘banging on about’ at every opportunity. For example, I’ve never been one to market what I do in terms ‘work with me and you’ll make lots of money’. But you want to make sure that, after all your costs and expenses, there is at least enough left over to pay you–the business owner–a salary or wage AND ideally that there is extra for putting back into the business or taking as a bonus.