The Language we Speak

When I was still a rookie-marketer, if I could call it that, I had this wonderful mentor. He taught me a great number of essential human etiquette that truly stayed with me throughout my marketing career.

In today's age, digital everything is taking marketing by storm. It's making marketing easier on some but more complex on others. But in essence, digital marketing is a wonderful new tool that opens doors for many small businesses.

The one big problem with digital marketing is too much focus on digital marketing. This happens when we forget the human element of our business. We focus more on the number aspect of marketing. How many likes, how many followers, how many views, how many reviews, how many clicks, how many shares etc. It becomes a number game and not a human gain.

I believe, marketing is a relationship phenomenon. The way we treat people will definitely have a major impact on one of the most important aspects of your marketing strategy, WORD OF MOUTH.

There is this saying that people will not remember you, but will always remember how you made them feel. The first time I heard this saying, it struck me how perfectly this fits into marketing.

My point is that we can have so many different strategies on how to better market ourselves and get our reach to this great high, but if you do not give people a good experience when they deal with you, you've lost. Then all your hard work, was truly not worth it.

Therefore, I wanted to share some fundamental secrets my mentor, Milton, shared with me and thought it would be interesting to share this with my growing marketing audience. These secrets have become so much a part of me as a person, that I want you to really implement them into the way you deal with your prospects and clients.

Whenever a person deals with your company or business or venture, it's so important to treat them as important. Never underestimate a kind gesture, people want to feel they matter.

My Milton Secrets:

• Greet people with real interest, shake their hand and look them in the eye
• Never only send an email to a new prospect, give them a call and arrange to meet them 
• When you phone a prospect or a client and you ask them how they are, don't do it out of habit, but be sincere 
• Always ask for information with true kindness and let it show in your correspondence and voice
• When conflict arises, stay calm and ask a question rather than directing a statement, get the focus on the solution and redirect it away from the problem (otherwise the focus is on blame)
• Apologise when you were wrong or made a mistake and truly make it up to your client 
• Be honest, never make promises you're not sure you can keep 
• Stay in contact with your client on the progress of their order 
• Always smile, even if you're having a bad day 
• Focus on the positive of every situation, no matter how bad it gets 

There are so many more Milton secrets I'd like to share with you, but I'll keep them out for my next blog session. Keep reading...