As promised, this month I want to introduce you to the first of The 16 Monumental Secrets of Guerilla Marketing, as conveyed by Jay Conrad Levinson in his national bestseller GUERILLA MARKETING.

The first of the sixteen secrets is that you must have COMMITMENT to your marketing program.  Commitment is what transforms your intentions and promises into reality, and it is what will define the success of your marketing campaign.  When you commit to sending out a consistent message, and with frequency, it will be received and retained by your audience as just that.  Marketing provides the means to consistently be in front of people, which allows you to continuously foster top of mind recognition which not only influences the potential customer but also leads to word of mouth advertising from them.

What makes marketing work, interestingly enough, is what also makes a variety of fundamental things in life work such as marriage, friendships, career, reaching your goals, and so on.  If you’re not committed to your marketing campaign, it’s most likely not going to be effective.  Purpose is a powerful thing, and marketing is something that should be done intentionally and with a plan.  This plan should be strategic and requires careful thought to be formulated and then commitment and consistency in its implementation.

Most often, I see businesses expecting miracles with respect to the results of their advertising campaign when it is painfully clear to me that they lacked any sort of consistency which would have driven the results they desire.  Commitment may be difficult at times, especially when you can’t specifically measure the success—or failure—of your investment.  However, patience is essential when it comes to commitment.  As business people, we are all familiar with times when we have been close to giving up but the outcome would have been completely different if we actually did.  The same goes with marketing.

I also see many business owners who, once they have seen successful outcomes from their brief marketing campaign, feel that they shouldn’t continue on with it and that the momentum they created during a short period of time will endure.  In fact, exactly the opposite is true.  We live in a fickle society where many things come and go, and once you are gone from sight it is easy to simply be forgotten.  Competition will always be a factor for businesses, and if you don’t continue to remind people why they should do business with you, they will find someone else to fulfill those needs.

Marketing should be considered as a marathon, not a sprint. The goal of an effective marketing campaign is long term, continuous engagement and commitment is the first and most fundamental step towards realizing it. Seems so simple but oh so very few do it and as a result their success gets hijacked. So the first step with you marketing plan should always be to make a COMMITMENT.  When you do that you increase your chances of success dramatically…if not exponentially.