Did you know that marketing is the most common first position to get cut if there’s a financial crisis in any company. The product team needs to be there, because the product is what the customers buy. The sales team needs to be there, because sales is a department that’s result and deals close driven.

But what about marketing? Marketing is very airy fairy, there’s no way to track the ROI you’re bringing to a company. Yes, you bring traffic, yes, you bring leads. But there’s no real way to track the business impact you’re creating with marketing.

Most marketers on the other hand don’t bother to learn about the business side of things, especially with the sales side. That’s why there are so many arguments that happen on the sales side and marketing side, because they don’t understand it.

A ROI based marketer can make a huge difference for marketing departments. This is something I recommend all marketers to be. Marketing at the end of the day is all about sales, and conversions.

Marketing is About Perception

How a company is perceived is very important. If you have a lowsy perception, then what you’ll find is that you’re going to always be scrambling to find leads. Instead of other people coming to you, you’ll be constantly chasing after other people.

The best position to have is for other people to see you as an authority and for them to come to you. Marketing is all about creating that perception and positioning yourself as a trusted authority. You never want to be seen as a “SALESMAN” but a trusted advisor.

To create a good perception, you must start off with HOW do you want other people to perceive you as? And start building your brand from that way. At JTC, I want people to see me as an “ace in the hole”, I want to be people’s little-known secret. The hidden rainmaker that makes everything work. How do you want your brand to be perceived? Professional, hipster, gangster, corporate?

Your perception matters, because your perception will always turn away some people and attract some people to you. So create a perception that suits you.

Most Marketers are NOT ROI based

Most marketers are not ROI based. I believe you need to push your marketing teams to be focused on conversions and not traffic, because although traffic is great – having a lot of people know about your product. However, if your traffic is not of quality – then it’s useless because your conversions will always remain low.

Your marketing needs to be ROI based, conversion based. Recently, after talking with really smart business owners, they all tell me the same thing. They will not hire just a copywriter or just a content creator. They are looking for content creator + marketing combination. They want to see results.

This is because many business owners have been burnt by hiring that odd digital agency that created a lot of fancy content, but led to zero conversions. So they altogether stop wanting to work with agencies unless they are really good, and just focus on building things in-house. With in-house, the promotion side of things gets handled AND the content side while agency may only cover one aspect.

But to tell you this, both is important – the content side and the promotion.

Marketing Requires Understanding Virality

A good marketing campaign, can set your sales team up for a hail Mary of leads. That’s why you want your marketers to understand what creates virality. Chances are, your marketing team understands the strategy part of marketing very well, this involves scheduling, collecting data analytics. But how do you move the needle? Many can’t answer this.

The reason because they don’t understand the psychology part of marketing. What makes people share? What makes people feel attracted to a brand?

How will you close, if you don’t understand the psychology and what makes people buy?

Most marketing campaigns are simply that. Boring, don’t stand out. There’s no “purple cow.” What you want is something that stands out, that’s out of the ordinary and make people stop right in their tracks to see you.

What you think is CRAZY right now, needs to be 10x even crazier, people are simply way too distracted in today’s world. You’re not marketing aggressive enough & your content not crazy enough.

UNLESS, and I mean unless you’re in corporate marketing where there’s no urgency to create sales because of an already huge budget. Small-mid sized business marketing need to stand out and be remarkable.

Marketing is About Inviting People to Sit In Your Table

Unlike sales which requires a more aggressive approach. Marketing is like inviting a guest to sit at your table. Its process, and also results will not be seen immediately. But if you keep at it, you’ll see that the people sitting in your table gets more and more.

But since unlike sales this is not approach based, but invitational based, it may take time for the ball to get rolling. But the people that sit in your table, they all trust you, they’re part of your team and they’re more predisposed to do business with you. That’s the power of marketing done well.

Done wrong however, will result in a massive time sink and money sink. So do it well, study the psychology, the strategy and execute on the vision.

Marketing is Not About Manipulation

I did a post about marketing which is that marketing is manipulation. Well not quite you see, I believe marketing is all about showing transparency authenticity and personal branding.

Of course, there’s the business side of things, the campaigns and sales aspect. But you’re helping people here. Good marketing makes people feel something, they reflect on their life and want to be better people. Marketing is about getting the right people to want to work with you.

You see, everybody in life has things that they want to go away from, and go towards to. You are simply showing people that your product is helping them move away their “fears, failures, broken dreams” and towards the promised land of “fun, amazing and greatness.” That’s it.

At the end of the day, a little bit of vulnerability and a little bit of honesty goes a long way. You want to create a brand people trust not people run away from. Anyways, I hope you found something from this article and have a great day.