The 10 Commandments of Marketing Part 1

You remember the story. Moses went up to Mt. Sinai. God gave him the Ten Commandments. The Israelites made a golden calf. Moses saw it and broke the stones that the Ten Commandments were written on. He went back up to get a new copy. God gave it to him. He read it to the Israelites. It became the most famous set of rules the world has ever known.

I was thinking about this story found in Exodus 20 and thought “What if there were a ‘Ten Commandments of Marketing?’”

So here’s what I think are the first four most important things about ethical marketing:

1. Setup no other god before the one true God.

OK, I borrowed that from the original. But I think it's important for business people to remember. As wonderful as your product or service is, it can't really perform miracles, so don't claim that it can. Don't set up your product or service as the savior.

2. Know your customers and solve their problems.

You've got to know your customers, and understand the problems they face. Your product or service must solve their problems to be valuable. Product demonstrations, samples, and testimonials are critical to your success. Psalm 34:8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord your God is good." So if your customer can experience firsthand how your product or service solves their problems, they will buy from you.

3. Have an excellent product or service.

An excellent product or service not only solves problems, it provides superior value. It leaves the customer feeling glad they bought it, and ready to buy from you again and again. If you're selling, but not developing a product, choose to sell products that are excellent. If you offer a service, then you are in the driver’s seat. You have the opportunity to define excellence and provide it to your clients.

4. Use no hyperbole (hype) in your marketing.

Excellent products or services need no hype. If your product must be 'built up' with pages and pages of copy to sell, it might not be ready market. Spend some more time in development. Make it excellent, and you won't need the hype.

How do you recognize hype? Hype is short for hyperbole which means to exaggerate. The ancient Greek literally meant to 'overshoot.' So if your marketing materials make any kind of exaggerated or unproven claims, you've got hype. Get rid of it. Look for the real selling points of you product and talk about those.

That’s it for now. I’ll continue this discussion in the next few issues.

Brett

Hope is NOT a Plan

Commit to the Lord everything you do.
Then your plans will succeed.

Proverbs 16:3

I started learning the guitar a year and a half ago. Since then I have incorporated playing into my quiet time with the Lord. I began going to our church early in the morning several times a week to sing and pray. I used the prayer room, which was being refurbished. On the unpainted walls, people had written their favorite bible verses and I often took inspiration from the verses I saw there.

On New Year's Eve 2009 I had returned to the church to pick up my guitar. On my way out I felt like God told me to go into the prayer room and read the verses printed on the wall between the door and the window. I was already running late, and almost ignored the prompting, but I went back inside to look up the verses anyway.

One was Proverbs 16:3 "Commit to the Lord every thing you do, and your plans will succeed." The other was "For you have not received a spirit of fear or of bondage, but a spirit of adoption" Romans 8:15-16.

"Praise the Lord!" I said. I'd take that. Those verses gave me great hope. I set the words to a simple tune, and sang it whenever I felt hopeless. It encouraged me throughout the year. I tried to make sure I was committing whatever I did to him.

After a year had passed, however, our situation hadn't changed much. We were still just treading water, barely keeping afloat. And there were sharks in the water.

Then it hit me. I HAD NO PLAN FOR GOD TO BLESS AND MAKE SUCCEED!!!! I had been going along with no direction, just taking clients and projects as they came my way. I wasn't marketing myself!

As a marketing consultant I've helped many clients plan how to attract customers through various marketing techniques. But I realized I've not done much for my own business.

I even put it in terms of an equation:

M x G = R

Where M = My Plans, G = God's Power, and R = Results.

Notice that it's a multiplication problem, and in multiplication, if any of the factors equal zero, the whole equation equals zero. So if M = 0, then R = 0 too. Without a plan, there's nothing to succeed.

So this is my challenge to you and to me: Get a plan. Develop it right away. Make it specific. Put goals, milestones and dates in it. Estimate what it will cost you, and allocate funds for it. Then, commit it to God and put it to work. Let's see what God will do!

Brett