by Drayton Bird

1. If you don’t deliver a good product or service you won’t succeed for long. No matter how good your marketing or advertising, you can’t sell rubbish indefinitely. Think of any business that’s gone down the drain – like AOL or the entire British car industry.
2. The customer you already have will always make about 3 – 5 times more money for you than an identical prospect – so pay more attention to them than anyone else
3. Advertising is not the only, and often by no means the best, way to build a brand. In fact it can cost you a fortune without achieving anything if you don’t have more money than God.
4. Most mergers and acquisitions end in chaos, misery and unemployment for the poor employees – and don’t create value. That is, the two firms together end up worth less than they were separate.  A good example is a cable business called NTL, known to its customers as NT Hell – the useless product of endless mergers.
5. All available research suggests that recommendation from others – word of mouth – is the chief reason why people buy. So if you don’t have a customer-get-a-customer or viral marketing programme, you’re mad.
6. Instead of worrying about talking to your prospects and customers too often, you’re better off thinking of reasons and interesting ways to talk to them more. One of my clients e-mails prospects as often as twice a week successfully. We mail our own list even more frequently. Very few unsubscribe.
7. Never assume because someone doesn’t buy they’re not interested. They have many things on their mind besides you. Keep communicating till it doesn’t pay

1. Relevance matters more than originality
2. The most important element in any creative endeavour is the brief
3. Most clients focus on the wrong things
4. The urgent takes precedence over the important
5. The customer you want is like the customer you’ve got
6. The product and positioning matter more than any other element in marketing
7. Who you are talking to matters more than what you sell
8. Database is the heart of marketing
9. The internet is just accelerated direct marketing
10. Emotion matters more than logic
11. The simple letter or email gives the best ROI
12. Long copy beats short
13. Incentives always pay
14. Segmentation is almost invariably worth it
15. Hardly anyone budgets for marketing intelligently
16. The customer you’ve got is 4 – 5 times more likely to buy from you than someone identical who is not a customer.
17. A previous enquirer is about twice as likely to buy.
18. A past customer is usually your next best bet.
19. After that comes someone who’s recommended
20. It pays to say thank you
21. Marketers are suckers for magic bullets
22. Marketing experts complicate things needlessly
23. If you say why you are writing, response goes up
24. Questionnaires almost always pay
25. Making people choose increases response
26. Few marketers use enough testimonials
27. Almost all meetings waste time
28. Flattery and greed are the two biggest draws
29. All successful messages solve problems
30. Sincerity always pays
31. Few messages ask forcefully enough for action
32. Repetition pays
33. People’s faces raise response
34. The more you communicate, the better you do
35. Research rarely predicts results accurately