Marketing Rules – interesting ideas

As a marketer, we love to conjure rules and strategies like a magician loves to conjure spells. Jokes apart, there are a ton of rules in marketing that have been put forth after loads of studies by brilliant minds and also with experience. These rules are guidelines and also a good way to get the engine running when you need an expert opinion. Some of these rules or ideas are devised to figure out what the company should do and other to figure out how campaigns should work.

All these marketing rules and many more not part of this list are applicable for all types of industries and companies size and regardless of the type of buyer persona in any geography. That does not mean you can implement them on their face value. I am going to put forth their definition for your but you will have to deep dive into each with your marketing expert or your digital marketing agency to implement any/all of them.

1. Golden rule – Carefully identify what your clients need and want, and then to show them that you can provide them with the service that will meet those needs. You need to have a direct connection with your target market to get the best return on investment from your marketing spend. Focus on benefits and not features!
2. Basic rule – Marketing is all about branding yourself to gain trust. Present your genuine side by relating to your audience, progressing at the speed of your audience to delight them. Most important is always take your competition seriously. No matter how small they look keep a tab on them. Group each competitor on the basis of the channels you are marketing.
3. 4-1-1 rule – Generally applied for social media, this rule is primarily a guideline. It states that for every six posts that get published, four should be created to educate or build awareness, one should be a soft selling content piece and one should be highlight the company’s USP or a hard sell. Picture the sales funnel and you will understand the reason for this rule.
4. 5 P’s or 11 P’s – To understand any concept you must understand the architecture and mostly importantly the roots. 5P’s or 11P’s define key marketing elements that are used to position a business strategically. By why not use either one? Well there is no specific answer other than the fact that 5Ps are enough but you must understand that the remaining 6 are also important. 11Ps including top 5 are product, price, promotion, place, people, process, physical evidence, personal relationships, packaging, positioning and performance.
5. 5C’s – Just like the architecture, marketing framework is also important. It helps to analyse the environment in which the company operates. These also helps in providing insights into drivers of success. 5C;s are company, collaborators, customers, competitors and context. Plan for the future and think expansively about your business.
6. Rule of 100 – This is not a ‘only’ finance team rule. From marketing perspective and more importantly, for a startup, this rule is important when analysing ROI or allocating budgets and goals. It states that a percentage discount will attract more for a value less than $100 and a numerical discount will attract more for a value more than $100. Now this $100 could be a gross or market value of the product or service. Define this base price by market research and then apply the rule of 100 for a better outreach.
7. 80/20 rule – One of the most popular rules in marketing is the Pareto principle of 80/20 rule. Definition states, that 80% of your results are a product of 20% of your actions. A marketing strategy that applies this rule is highly effective and a team that imbibes this is most efficient and can utilise their resources optimally.
8. Above the fold – Primarily used in digital marketing, this is an interesting rule and applicable to everyone who visually interprets any content. Literally speaking, it focuses on the area of the screen that first greets the users when they land on any page. If you can deliver your message and convey or attract the audience without them making any other action then you are on the right track toward marketing your product or service. It is applicable for all design elements that you will promote for your business. A direct impact to your engagement metrics, this approach will inspire users to explore your offerings and benefits.
9. 60/40 rule – This one is absolutely for all startups. 60% of your advertising focus should be on long term building and 40% on immediate actions and activations. People can debate on the percentages but what it really means is that when you should invest maximum efforts on building a strong foundation but it shouldn’t be too much that you forget generating immediate business. It shouldn’t be vice versa too because by only focusing on short term goals you miss out on what could be a potential game changer for your company in future. Only a strong base can help your company sustain market challenges and build trust.
10. 3 second or 8 second rule of marketing – The time span of users is getting shorter day by day and new mechanisms have stepped in to cater to this change. Marketing has always been emphasising on the fact that it takes only 3 seconds to create an impact and 8 seconds to decide whether or not to take any action. For startups, it is crucial that the pull all their ideas into planning those 3 to 8 seconds of an ad copy or messaging to stand out from any player in the market. There is no big and small when it comes to this rule so everyone can cash in on it!
11. Rule of 7 – there has been extensive study made on how many times should one engage with the audience before they can earn trust. All those studies emphasise on frequent communication with your audience to allow building trust and strengthening the brand. It is also called an integrated marketing approach wherein all campaigns chip in to help the prospect traverse down the sales funnel without a hard sell. It also means your team should be smart enough to create messaging for any touch point that a prospect may enter and still manage to connect with him at least seven times with various benefits.
12. 70-20-10 rule – This is more of a strategy than a rule and it should change with every passing year of the business based on the ROI. It emphasise the importance of content marketing for a business and how best to optimise the same. This is however possible if you have completed content gap analysis exercise first. 70% should be proven content that focuses on branding. 20% should be on premium content which attracts your best audience or growth accounts. It can also attract some more investment but that’s fine as it will generate a bigger potential audience. 10% should be experimental including various offers or events you might run. Nudge your audience always to find their pulse and then invest more. You never know, 10% might assist more than 60% of your ROI.
13. Rule of thumb of marketing – A good return on investment has been defined with a 5:1 ratio. Exceptional would be 10:1 and anything below 2:1 is considered not profitable. I know there are various challenges in measuring marketing ROI but this simple mechanism should help you. Remember that costs and overheads of less than 50% of sales price can see profits at lower ratios. Develop standards that match your company size and work on considering unique overheads, margins, etc. to come to a value that will help you determine you marketing ROI. Make sure you convey to your finance team that marketing is an investment centre and not a cost centre.
14. Attract – Convert – Close – Delight – Coined by the famous marketing leader, Hubspot this is the best way to learn and work on inbound marketing. An agile approach towards all the parts of the sales funnel or the sales journey will help you understand how the scope of marketing has grown. It is not just the area that marketing covers, it’s the transparency and power with which marketing impact all points. Turn strangers into customers and promoters! Attract with things that are relative to their lives – real life problems. Convert by truly caring about solving their problem. Close by offering benefits and helping their achieve their goal. Delight by upholding this relationship at every step and creating a climate best suited for both.
15. 30-60-90 day plan – Want your team to deliver the best from day one? This rule is not only specific to marketing but to all teams that work in a company. 30 day plans showcase short term goals that can be easily achieved with less knowledge about the product and/or service. They should open all gates required for a resource to function as a member of the team. Next 30 days should focus on understanding how much of their knowledge can be put into use and where. Allow the resource to devise campaigns or plans or strategies that align with your yearly goals and get them to work on it. Next 30 days should focus on how they analyse existing functions and teams, what are their views on each member and campaign that is running. Build a solid tracking metric by the end of 90 days from onboarding of your resource to ensure 100% delivery and adherence to all compliances.

Do you know more? Let me know in the comments below and we can brainstorm together.