The best way to understand the 3 basic marketing principles is to group them into one of three categories:
- Know-how
- Attitudes
- Actions
The Power of A Real Estate Marketing Triangle
Marketing means many things to many people.
Whenever a group of three items is mentioned…such as three categories of marketing…my mind inevitably visualizes a real estate marketing triangle.
The triangle is the single most important shape in engineering.
Particularly stable shapes, triangles are great to use in building. They don’t twist, bend, or collapse easily. You can’t change the shape of a triangle without altering the length of one of its sides.
While certainly true for engineers, the triangle can be a very effective illustration of the overall power of a marketing triangle, and also of its individual components.
Know-how: What You Know & Applying What You Know
Basic Marketing Principles
The first of basic marketing principles is:
- what you know
- knowing how to effectively apply what you know
Those two components comprise the Know-how category element of marketing.
Since marketing know-how is the foundation for successful marketing activities, know-how would represent the base of the marketing triangle.
From a numerical perspective, know-how could be considered to represent 20% of the total marketing effort.
The sub-categories of what you know and applying what you know each representing 10% of the overall marketing effort. As the base of the marketing triangle, know-how is connected to the other two components: attitudes and actions
In today’s information-rich world, it’s trite but true that knowledge is power.
The more knowledge…or know-how…that you have about your market and the clients in this market, the better you will be able to attract and serve the best clients.
If knowledge is a valuable resource, more is not necessarily better.
In fact too much information or knowledge can often interfere with effective marketing.
In the extreme, too much information, or the ongoing quest to gather more…or analyze existing…information can lead to a condition commonly called ‘paralysis by analysis’.
When gathering knowledge, or analyzing existing information, remember that know-how represents only 20% of the marketing effort.
Try to limit your ‘know-how’ time to that percentage.
Our Attitudes Determine What We Do
Basic Marketing Principles
For purposes of the marketing triangle, our attitudes represent those mental factors that inspire, motivate, and in any way drive us to do the things we do.
Representing 40% of the overall marketing effort, our attitudes form the left side if the triangle, connect with know-how at the base and with actions…the right side side of the triangle…at the top.
Inspirational writers like Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking) and Napoleon Hill (Think And Grow Rich) have helped us understand how incredibly powerful our mindsets and attitudes can be in bringing about results…both positive and negative.
Today there seems to be no end of inspirational and motivational gurus who promise no end of success.
All we have to do is follow their examples and do what they did and tell us to do.
Appealing and seductive as their messages are, it is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits -all standardized mindset or combination of attitudes that will guarantee our individual success.
When dealing with the attitude element of the marketing triangle, the main challenge is to find the right combination of productive attitudes that will keep us working to achieve our goals.
It’s also important to resist the seductive temptation of becoming a motivation junkie, continuously looking for the ultimate motivational experience.
There are two good ways to avoid becoming a a motivation junkie.
The first is to limit the time and energy devoted to attitudinal issues to no more than 40% of your marketing effort.
And second, instead of chasing new motivational experiences, devote your time and energy to improving the attitudinal issues that are already effective for you.
Actions That Achieve Our Goals
There are four kinds of actions that help us achieve our goals:
- planning
- implementing our plans
- follow-up with leads, prospects, clients and referral sources
- unplanned responses to unexpected circumstances
These combined actions would represent 40% of the marketing effort, with each kind of action representing 10%.
The right side of the triangle, it would connect with know-how at the base, and attitudes at the top.
We all know that it is our actions that make things happen to bring about the outcomes that we want.
Unfortunately not all marketing actions are as effective and efficient as they might be.
- Some people devote too much time to any or all of the four kinds of action.
- Other people do not devote enough time to on any or all of the four kinds of action.
- Many people waste too much time on unproductive actions.
How To Benefit From Those 3 Basic Marketing Principles?
The simplest approach to drawing on the power of the marketing triangle, is to apply all the 3 basic marketing principles yourself.
The downside of this approach is that it is not always possible to objective about your own know-how, attitudes and actions.
In many cases, perhaps even yours, the assistance of an independent coach can help you generate the new ideas and take the appropriate actions that you need to achieve your goals.
Next Article: Enhancing Your Know-How
Article published on “Real Estate Marketing News” Ezine Jan 2010
