The 3 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers

The 3 Habits of Highly Effective Marketers

Marketing is a crucial aspect of any successful business. Whether you’re trying to promote a product, build brand awareness, or increase sales, having a strong marketing strategy can make all the difference. But what separates truly effective marketers from the rest? It’s not just about having a big budget or a flashy campaign. Rather, the most successful marketers have developed a set of habits that enable them to consistently deliver results.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the three key habits of highly effective marketers and provide actionable tips for incorporating them into your own marketing efforts. Whether you’re a seasoned marketing professional or just starting out, these habits can help you achieve greater success and drive real business growth.

Habit #1: Customer research

Understanding your customers better than anyone else is a competitive advantage.
In today’s market, features are mostly undifferentiated, there are more options to choose from than ever, and new startups pop up every day. The only difference between you and the next business is how well you know your customers.

A lack of customer research can be the cause of many business woes:

  • Customers are signing up but they’re churning out just as fast as they come in.
  • Marketing experiments are expensive, inconclusive, or underperforming.
  • Prospects are expressing a lot of interest but just aren’t closing into customers.
  • New features and products don’t seem to be making a difference in revenue growth or product/market fit.

How do you do customer research?

  • Ask for a video call and just spend 30 minutes with someone to get to know them better
  • Send a survey out to a specific group of people
  • Collect qualitative research from online communities, forums, review sites, and social media platforms

Get answers to questions like these:

  • What was going on in your world when you started looking for something like our product?
  • How did you try to solve this in the past?
  • How did some products work for you and others fail you?
  • Why didn’t those solutions work out?
  • Why did you originally decide to try our product?
  • Why did you decide to go with our product rather than others you’ve tried?
  • What is the primary benefit that you have received from our product?
  • How would you feel if you could no longer use our product? Why?
  • What would you likely use as an alternative to our product if it were no longer available?
  • Have you recommended our product to anyone? If so, how did you describe it?
  • What other roles or titles besides yours do you think would get a big benefit from our product?
  • How could we improve our product to better meet your needs?

Habit #2: Positioning to win

There are two questions that marketers don’t ask enough:


1. Why should someone care what I have to say?
2. Why should someone choose my product(s) over an alternative?

Your success as a marketer is dependent on what you offer and your offer is dependent on how well you’re positioning yourself.

Here’s what happens when you have strong positioning:

  • People are immediately hooked when they land on your website
  • You make internet strangers feel understood, appreciated, and compelled to keep listening to what you have to say
  • You stick in their minds so that even if they get distracted or decide to leave it for another day, you’ll be in the back of their mind thinking about your product(s)
  • People immediately understand what you do, how you can help, and why your product is the best solution for them

April Dunford outlines 5 key steps in her book “Obviously Awesome” to craft strong positioning:

  1. Competitive Alternatives: If you didn’t exist, what would customers use?
  2. Key Unique Attributes: What features & capabilities do you have that alternatives don’t?
  3. Value: What value do the attributes enable for customers?
  4. Customers that Care: Who cares a lot about that value?
  5. The market you Win: What context makes the value obvious to your target segments?

Habit #3: Using mental models & frameworks

Mental models are simple thought processes or ways of visualizing how things work in reality.
They help us simplify complex things so we can reason through them and make better decisions.
Using [correct] mental model and framework offer you a way to consistently get more information and make better marketing decisions.

Example of mental model: Stages of Awareness

5 levels of awareness

Eugene Schwartz covered this in his classic book “Breakthrough Advertising back in 1966.

  • Completely Unaware: Your prospect doesn’t know that they have a problem.
  • Problem-Aware: Your prospect senses he has a problem but doesn’t know there’s a solution.
  • Solution-Aware: Your prospect knows the result he wants, but not that your product provides it.
  • Product-Aware: Your prospect knows what you sell, but isn’t sure it’s right for him.
  • The Most Aware: Your prospect knows your product, and only needs to know “the deal.”

Example of mental model: Promoting outcomes, not products or services

Your customers don’t care about your product. All they care about is outcomes.

  • Will this help me be more attractive?
  • Will this save me time?
  • Will this make me more money?
  • Will this impress my boss?
  • Will this allow me to do something I couldn’t do previously?
  • Will this ease the pain?

Marketing is about showing potential customers what they’ll be able to do, who they’ll be, or what they’ll avoid by buying your product or service.

Example of framework: C.R.I.B.S.

CRIBS stands for:

  • Confusing: By asking what’s confusing, you give people an opportunity to tell you what doesn’t make sense to them.
  • Repeated: Repetition can be good in the right context, but you want to remove things that are repetitive unnecessarily.
  • Insightful: Asking for what’s insightful will give you the highlights, and maybe what to expand more on.
  • Boring: It’s important to know if what you’re doing is boring.
  • Surprising: Things can be surprising in both good and bad ways.

In conclusion, becoming a highly effective marketer requires a combination of strategy, creativity, and discipline. By adopting the three habits we’ve discussed – continuous customer research, perfect positioning to win, and continually testing different mental models and frameworks – you can position yourself for long-term success in the world of marketing.

Remember, the most effective marketers never stop learning, experimenting, and refining their approach. By embracing a growth mindset and staying committed to your goals, you too can become a highly effective marketer and make a meaningful impact on your organization’s success. So take action today and start putting these habits into practice – the results are sure to follow.

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