For many people, successful marketers are people who have undergone specialized training which makes them great at pulling in customers.
However, this is not always true.
You first need to know what a habit is and implement the great habits which will turn you into a successful marketer.
What is a habit?
A habit is a behavior that is learned through repetition until it becomes involuntary and instinctive.
When you repeat negative habits, such as biting your nails, picking your nose, maxing your credit cards, then you build negative habits which do not augur well with how you interact with society.
Once you have formed a habit, it becomes incredibly difficult to break it.
To become a successful marketer, you have to repeatedly act in a certain manner which will breed the habits.
According to research, it only takes as little as 66 days for a habit to be created; this means you don’t have to practice for too long to generate the good habits of marketing well.
So, what are the habits of successful marketers?
#1: Clearly define your objectives
You must first know what you are working towards before you even take the first step in creating a marketing strategy or campaign.
You need to know what you want to achieve within the next 6 months, one year, a couple of years, etc., so you can consistently work towards the gal without wave run.
As part of defining your goals, you also need to set milestones through which you will be able to measure your success.
Is it the number of subscribers you have, conversion rates, SEO ranking, etc?
When you have a clear vision of what you want to chive, you will have one critical habit that is learned by most top marketers.
#2: Understand your target audience
To be a great marketer, you need to think in the same manner that your target audience thinks; you need to be able to get into their heads and anticipate the solutions that they will be seeking from you as a marketer.
In marketing, you must be able to create fictional personas that fit your target audience.
This means understanding their demographics, their standing in the business world, the geographical factors that may inform their busying decisions among many more.
Then you must figure out what kind of message will resonate well with your audience.
Which marketing channels are best suited to reach out to them? A CEO of a company would prefer to read a well-written email, while a teenager would rather comb social media to find products and services.
Understanding each of them will direct you on how to reach out to them.
You also need to know how you will add value to the things that really matter to them. How will you communicate this value to them?
There are a lot of factors to consider when trying to understand your audience and you should practice how best to communicate with them to become a successful marketer.
#3: Get to know your competition
As a marketer, you must always be in touch with what your competition is doing to outsmart you, and then try to turn the tables on them.
There are certain questions that you have to answer with regards to how your competition is carrying out its marketing
- Identify who your competition is.
- What do they do when trying to out-perform your products?
- Where are they located?
- Who are their customers?
- What is your unique value proposition (UVP)?
- How do customers look at your brand with respect to your competitors’ brands?
- Are there identifiable mistakes in your competition’s marketing?
- What can you do to take advantage of these mistakes?
The market is in a constant state of flux, so it is not enough to assess the competition once; you must do so regularly.
Use this information to tailor a marketing strategy that should give your business or brand a competitive edge over your competition.
#4: Be creative and also consider new ideas
You can easily become complacent if you keep on doing the same things all the time.
Perhaps you simply type out the same word within your content and do not have the energy to add in a little more spice.
The best thing to do to get out of this content rut is to become creative in the way you communicate in marketing.
Try a different mode of saying the same thing. For example, if you write a 2,000-word article, try to add more zest into your message by recording a video about the same topic.
Try using a different platform and see if the message can be tuned to fit the platform; basically, you are marketing the same thing, but customizing it to fit the platform.
This is a problem that most B2B marketers come across, where they find themselves unable to make their marketing more interesting perhaps because the content is going to business owners who may not appreciate humor being used in business communications.
When you embrace creativity, then you rise above the rank and file in the flood of content overload.
Innovative thinking will bring creativity that will shine bright and your target audience will notice you.
To be creative, you must be in a constant listening mode too.
You need to hear what your target audience is saying about the content they would rather consume.
You cannot afford to keep doing the same thing if you want to succeed as a marketer.
#5: Take risks, and learn to get up when you stumble
When everything seems to be going smoothly, then you have probably hit a plateau and fear taking risks that may upset the status quo.
Maybe you feel it is enough when you are making small steps in building your business and don’t want to take huge steps that may impact your business in a big way.
You may cringe even when you know that a huge step could significantly boost your business.
This should not be the case.
When you take a huge risk and succeed, you will gain confidence as a marketer and your business will flourish
When you take a huge risk and fail, learn how to pick yourself up and try it again all over till you succeed.
Success is attained by those who have the confidence to embrace new perspectives, test new approaches, and challenge the status quo.
When risk-taking flops, you get an opportunity to examine where you went wrong and how you will do it better the next time around.
#6: Learn to share information
When an organization does not have proper communication between its various departments, it can lose a lot of money in the long run.
There is a tendency for some departments to horde information that they come up with, not knowing that the information could be critical in another department.
When you fail to share information, you kill performance, innovation, and ultimately growth.
To succeed in marketing, you need to collaborate and communicate with other teams from other departments.
Share strategies and see where they can have a synergistic effect to propel growth exponentially.
Share feedback and listen to suggestions from team members.
Apart from communicating within your organization, you should communicate with others outside. Join industry professional groups, go to conventions and learn from others; you just might get an idea that you would never have conceived on your own.
#7: Be organized and create time blocks for each of your projects
There are times when you might feel overwhelmed by trying to do too many things at the same time.
Proponents of multitasking may disagree about this point, but to become an effective marketer, you need to schedule blocks of time for each of the tasks you do.
You may be doing an accounting session to figure out how cost-effective your marketing is; if at the same time you see a gap to do something, simply take note of it, and schedule a time to do it.
You should not try to perform two projects at the same time, since it is easy to make serious mistakes.
The best way to go about such a scenario is to take a few detailed notes about the opportunity you have uncovered and then schedule a time to work on it fully.
You should schedule a time to get to milestones for your daily activities.
If you have several projects running, then know what when, and how you should complete them
Be generous when allocating time and avoid feeling overwhelmed.
The journey to the top of a mountain starts with just one step and then continues taking another step after the last.
#8: Create meaningful relationships
It is not enough to simply sell a product to your customer; you need to create relationships that will last beyond that one sale.
To create lasting relationships with your customer, you need to fully understand their needs, and then showing them how your products or services will be of assistance in the long run.
This is where you need to generate value for your products or services.
For example, a soap manufacturer must create a lasting relationship so customers do not move to another brand; they need to have a lasting value in the soap that the manufacturer produces.
This is the best way to create loyalty that goes beyond the initial purchase.
You must generate trust through meaningful communication, making the customer feel that he or she matters to you.
Meaningful relationships are built through great customer experiences; always keep that in mind.
#9: Pay close attention to the data
Marketers are creative creatures and find the task of analyzing data very tedious.
However, to succeed as a marketer, you must be willing to analyze data to see where there is room for improvement.
Marketing data is used to inform marketing decisions and is a crucial co in the marketing machine.
By analyzing data, you get to know:
- The strategies are working with your target audience.
- The kind of message that will resonate well with your audience, amongst others
When you do A/B testing, it will be based on data that you have analyzed and when the testing is done, you will have to analyze the resultant data to see which strategy is working best.
Learn to streamline your marketing by analyzing data and making it one of your marketing habits.
#10: learn to notice current trends
Being able to read the current trends is a crucial habit of successful marketers.
You need to know what the hype is to resonate with it.
A successful marketer should be able to read the market and see how to tune the marketing message to resonate with the trend.
The sentiments of the market rule how people buy products and services.
Bonus Habit:
There is one bonus habit that applies to ALL successful marketers and this is the ability to become a great storyteller.
Marketing is about moving your audience with a wonderful story about your product.
Although this is a task that is left to copywriters, it should be a habit that you add to your arsenal.
Some of the greatest companies are those that have a creative way of telling stories to their audiences.
Take a look at how companies like Coca-Cola go about creating stories about their products; you will see a direct correlation between great stories and successful marketing.
Take Away
There are a lot of beneficial habits that you should cultivate to become a successful marketer and this list of 10 habits does not cover them all.
However, these are the most crucial habits that will put you on the right path to building a reputation as a formidable marketer.
Like we mentioned at the start, you must practice these tips severally for them to become habits; habits that will propel you to the peak of your marketing career.
