Graham McGregor: Creating good marketing habits...

9:30 AM Tuesday Sep 18, 2012

If you don't have good marketing habits it's very easy to get excited and motivated for a short time whenever you come across brand new marketing ideas.

You try them for a short period of time and then you stop using them.

And within a few weeks you are right back to where you were before.

The secret is to make these new ideas things that you do automatically by habit.

Here are some simple ways to create good marketing habits.

Make the habit easy to do:

Over the last 34 years I have done extremely well in sales by sending out a small number of handwritten thank you cards each work day in my business.

I rarely send out less than 4 a day and often it is higher than this.

In my Day Timer each day I put six blank thank you cards and six pre-stamped envelopes. I also have with me at least 10 names and mailing addresses of people that I could potentially send a thank you card out to.

This could be in the form of some business cards, a print out from my computer, a message on my phone and so on.

I make sure that during each workday I address at least four of these envelopes and write four short hand written messages on the thank you cards. I then mail the thank you cards that work day. The total time to do this is ten minutes a day or about 2 minutes for each thank you card. I also make sure I arrive early for most face to face appointments. This usually gives me time to not only think about the meeting but write a thank you card if I want to as well.

By having the thank you cards on hand, with pre stamped envelopes and details of people I can send these to I have made the whole process very easy to do.

Start early in the day:

One of my personal goals is to write a certain number of articles, special reports and programmes on marketing each year.

I make sure that each day one of the first things I do is sit at my computer and write a page or more of marketing ideas. This takes around 15 minutes to do. One page a day is over 300 pages a year which is the size of a book!

To start with, I set my alarm clock for 15 minutes earlier and after a month I was in the habit of getting up earlier and writing my page or more of marketing material.

Make it convenient:

A few years ago I had the habit of losing my keys at home and wasting time looking for them. My solution was to buy a really nice key holder that I screwed to the garage wall where I parked my car. And all I did every time I got out of my car was put my keys on this key holder. The end result is I always knew where my car keys were.

Have simple reminders

A salesperson I met explained how he created the habit of asking three people each day for referrals. He put three coins in his left hand trouser pocket. Whenever he asked a person for a referral he would move one coin to his right hand trouser pocket. Every time he put his hands in his pocket he was reminded how many people he still had to ask for referrals.

When you have good marketing habits you'll be surprised at the good results these create for you.

"Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as are bad habits"

Robert Puller

Action Exercise:

What marketing habits would it be helpful for you to start doing on a regular basis? How can you make them easy or more convenient to do?