Five Things Smart Marketers Always Do

Starting with one simple thing NOT to do

Take a look at this marketing email I received.
Yes, it’s a template. Yes, it’s generic. Yes, it’s actually untruthful.

Good marketing doesn’t work this way.

Let me tell you why.

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What Good Marketers Do Not Do

Here’s a marketing piece, as a warning:

Someone was Hallucinating

Maybe it was AI, or maybe it was the copywriter. But this kind of stuff is why nobody believes marketing anymore. If you’re selling a product or service, sending templates to emails harvested off the web with no knowledge of the recipients or what they value is absolutely —

Destined to fail.

Because marketing is supposed to lay the groundwork for relevancy, so a salesperson can earn a sale. It won’t happen when you start off like this, because someone clearly couldn’t be bothered to know their audience, nor were they bothered by falsehoods :

"We've been following your real estate content and listings....”

No, you haven’t, because I don’t have listings.

“… we took a deeper look with fresh eyes...."

If you had, you wouldn’t have made the first mistaken claim.

So: first impression trust factor = zero.
Which means: There’s no chance I'm working with you.

There’s No Need to Churn Content Like This

I may be preaching to the choir, but serious salespeople aren’t this lazy. They care about their reputation. They take selling themselves and their services seriously. They wouldn’t want to lower their brand perception by cranking out content like this.

Great salespeople know that four messages build relationships with prospects:

Communicating a sense of importance
Sparking pride in being solicited
Igniting certainty in the prospect that they’re better off responding
Giving prospects control over the process

That’s how serious marketers work: They fill these relationship buckets, so salespeople can then step in and sell.

So why embarrass yourself?

This smacks of AI-constructed marketing. “Hey, ChatGPT, write an email for REALTORS that tells them they need to use more visuals and we can help….” What a waste of time (and as we’ll see, brand respect.)

What’s the alternative? Prompting yourself to take a minute to research a prospect, write one or two relevant sentences that invite a conversation, and show you mean it:

“We see you’re in real estate and generate great content. Could you use any help?”
”Could you use ideas for making your content more engaging to readers?”

Of course, you could go all the way, and visit my website, either newsletter, or my personal or professional Facebook pages, YouTube page, or Instagram account. Then you’d REALLY know who I am, and could REALLY apply fresh eyes to make a SPECIFIC recommendation that captures my attention:

“We read your latest newsletter about learning from Jerry Seinfeld and we loved it! We also think that if you had (included something) or (added something else) or (tried this enhancement) you might reach even more subscribers…. Could we help you make that happen?”

That would have caught my attention and had me writing a very different response (or newsletter about it).

Stop Trying to Sell when Marketing

And start trying to market your value.

Stop trying to get rich, quick; instead, focus on getting rich, good.

Forget trying to “mass” market because you can’t handle the mass market. Say this email was sent to 10,000 email addresses: Could they even handle 1000 responses? Or 100? And then what?

So what’s the point of mass marketing when you can’t satisfy the masses?

But you can satisfy one customer. And then another, and another. When you let marketing do its job, and sales do the rest.

Reminds me of a recent conversation:

A broker-owner called me recently, anxious about the latest housing predictions:

Broker: "Did you see the report predicting 4.2 million home sales this year?"
Me: "Yes, I did. Pretty cool, huh?"
Broker: "Oh no! That's the lowest number in years!"
Me: "You sound worried...."
Broker: "Well, what are we going to do?"
Me: "Maybe the question is, how many do you need to be successful this year?"
Broker: "About 1,000 transactions ...."
Me: "Whew! For a moment I thought you were going to say more than 4.2 million.”

You get the point.

Whether you’re in online marketing or home sales, growth happens by focusing on one person at a time. (Even mass product companies like Coca-Cola try to make you feel you’re the only person in their marketing.)

Marketing isn’t a sales mechanism. It’s a pre-sales tool. It’s your first hello to people whose lives you intend to change. Your marketing lays the groundwork for sales, where the really important work is done. If you’re the product (most service people) then you can’t be “purchased, downloaded, and enjoyed” — which means you’re going to have a sales call at some point.

That point isn’t in marketing.

And especially not if your marketing starts out with half-truths and couldn’t-cares.

A marketing genius moment at the Coliseum in Rome

It’s Better to Get Help than to Get A.I.

There’s so much data about your prospective clients. So many opportunities, as Peter Drucker said, “to know the customer so well that your marketing fits them, and virtually sells itself.”

Honestly, that isn’t going to happen from AI-generated content that can be distributed but can’t make a connection to the vast majority of people who experience it.

Other than, unfortunately, undermining your other marketing assets, like reputation, transparency, and honesty.

If your marketing is relying on churn-and-burn, now powered by lazy algorithms, disconnected from your sales process, then take a break. You deserve something better (and so do your prospects). Get some help from your manager or marketing team. Or the many good scions of marketing, like my friends at 1000Watt or others who take marketing seriously.

So you can be a serious contender for someone’s relationship and business, right from the start.

—M

Keep Reading for Five Ways All Good Marketers Do It Right 👇

Here are five critical steps to better marketing. Master these insights before creating your next email/video/newsletter/flyer/website/whatever.