The Unwritten Law of Marketing

An unwritten marketing law is that people are creatures of habit. It usually takes great efforts to persuade somebody to switch to another product. The companies are spending billions of dollars to persuade people to use their product instead of another brand. But many of them fail, mainly because people are used to the brands they use.

People who have chosen to contribute to your organization or buy your product instead of your competitor’s would prefer to stick with you. To switch their allegiance to another organization or comparable product is to admit that they had made a wrong decision—in effect, to admit failure. It’s very difficult to change people’s buying patterns, because this means moving people out of their comfort zone. People are creatures of habit. But you will lose your customers if they lose sight of you—that is, if they stop receiving communications. Or if they receive communications so infrequently that you are no longer a part of their regular routine, no longer a part of their everyday life.

Email makes it very inexpensive to stay in almost daily contact with your customers. Your email communications should not all be sales pitches. Very few should be. Your email communications should provide valuable information that you know will be of interest to your customers. You must constantly put your organization, your business, your service, your product, in front of your customers and leads—just like Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and every successful corporation that depends on the average consumer for business. This is such a basic principle of marketing that I am stunned at how few small businesses understand it.