Many years ago, the father of management – Peter Drucker – wrote about the theory of business and it is a helpful concept for marketers to understand.

He asks these types of questions: 

What are the assumptions of the business environment

What are the assumptions of your companies mission and what it defines as meaningful results?

How are these assumptions in line with your customers – how do they integrate? 

The question now is: What is your theory of marketing? Or the theory of the advertisement campaign that you just made?

Lots of theories are just built around of a string of assumptions.

What assumptions are you making right now about your marketing? 

When you launch that next campaign – can you simplify it down into one sentence – one metric?

93% of people can’t.

The clearer you are – the more likely it is that you actually know what you are doing.

Even though I write these posts every single day; I have had a focus on the power of visuals.

I would believe photos, videos and immersive experiences where the way to get to people’s emotional hearts, and the way to change them.

I didn’t give words any value.

Deep down – I knew their value but I took them as a secondary component; not as a primary one.

The turning point for me was that, while I knew people think and remember with sensory and visuals, they are also motivated and take extreme meaning to what words mean to them.

They will tell themselves quotes and they will recount stories to themselves and friends. Words matter to people.

People use words to guide their mental frameworks, to make decisions and to understand the world around them.

I guess what I realized is that, it isn’t all visual when you tell your friend who is down a quote and it changes their life.

There was something about a string of eight or ten words that changed him.

Words are a tool of change and if used correctly – have just as much power as visuals.

Everyone talks about how word of mouth is the best form of marketing that there is.

It’s about having a product or service so good that people talk about it (for free!) and bring their friends.

The thing about word of mouth marketing is that its an outdated term. People talk about it like its a medium in and of itself, when in actuality its a natural byproduct of successful marketing.

It would be like a business saying that their number “form of business” is profit; it may be true but its not really a helpful action item. No profit is actually derived from creating value. And just like profit, word of mouth is a byproduct of marketing.

So when people talking about word of mouth marketing, they are really talking about a product or service that is worth talking about, yet they never actually do anything about it. You make something worth talking about it by being something that people actually care about.

People always try to hit home runs in marketing.

They try to change the entire game. This is perfect. This is what you want to do.

However, the downfall comes when you get attached to outcomes. Because, what if you set out to create the best marketing campaign that ever existed – and you fail – What do you do then?

Outcomes are out of the marketers control. What we can control is the way we approach our work. The way we listen to the customer. The way we adapt when the data comes in.

It’s not about the marketer that does one campaign, its the one that can keep doing campaigns for the long run. That requires patience and listening.

Stories work because they act as Trojan horses.

It transports the listener to a place that they never thought they would go.

The interesting thing with the human mind – is that it has trouble telling the difference between reality and imagination.

When you tell a story and it’s engaging enough – it feels like you are really there. It feels like it’s actually happening.

Because of all the associations that come with a story – it’s also much easier from someone to remember.

The story itself gives them a reason to share.

Always have stories in your quiver when speaking and marketing.

The intercept the mind in ways that information never could.

When you ask for feedback from your clients is often more important than what you ask your clients in the field of marketing.

When you ask at point of sale: People will rationalize why they decided to get your product or service because ego is involved. They say it was what they needed, that you were the best or the best price. All of which is hardly true because it’s likely they didn’t fully study all of your competitors and know everything about them – they instead made the best decision they could make, with the information and time that they had. However, this leads to responses that seem good on the surface but don’t really provide insight on what brought them to you in the first place.

Now, when you ask someone at point of contact – things change.

Point of contact finds why they were drawn to your business rather than a rationalization of what they bought it afterwards. You are starting at the point of attention rather than a point of rationalization.

You will find that the responses you get begin to change – because you are starting the feedback closer to their true reality.

Customer insights should be focused on the customer’s actual reality rather then post rationalizations and pleasing people.

When someone considers your product or service – there is a potential exchange in momentum.

There is a potential exchange in momentum because people can’t just adopt your product or service out of nothing – they have to replace in the process to do that.

They have to stop using another product. They have to change their setup. They gain time over here. They loose time over here.

Each product or service creates this cause and effect type of situation.

The clearer we can get about these cause and effect relationships – and ask: What do they have to change or give up to use my product or service?

And: when they start using the product or service – how do they change?

If we have any chance of performing effectively in marketing – we have to start with clarity.

Clarity comes from understanding what marketing is for.

Marketing exists to solve business problems. Specifically the business problem of creating customers.

Creation only happens if something has changed – if nothing has changed – no customer has been created.

Marketing thoughtfully – through empathy – gets really clear about the change and the business problem.

If this isn’t clear or in your marketing plan – you are not marketing.

No, you are in the category of people who think they are.

Marketing is commonly perceived as “getting the word out” letting people know what you stand for, what your purpose is and who you serve.

However, what nobody talks about is what not to say.

In fact, there are only so many things you can say – there is only one place to land and a thousand places to crash.

When you know what not to say, your strengthen what you decide to say.

Brand building requires to think deeply about both.