The challenge of business marketing is that it works best when you do it regularly and consistently. I have been faithful to that philosophy for years. But recently I’ve been away from my newsletter and my blog. My apologies to those of you who counted on me as a beacon of consistency!

Winning Customers with Charm

At any rate, I took a small survey at Christmas to see if people liked the format of the newsletter or preferred it some other way. Consensus was that a single article was a good choice. So that’s the way it will stay–and here’s one for today.

Marketing is not about throwing your money away on “stuff that doesn’t work.” It’s not about jumping on the bandwagon for anything new the minute it comes out. It’s about consistently presenting your business in the marketplace in ways that reflect who you are, hwhatexactly you can do for your customers, and why the hell anybody would want to do business with you. It’s about putting a face and a voice to your business. And it’s about staying in front of people in whatever ways your industry and your prospects like to get their information.

Marketing as Relationship Building

And it’s always, always about speaking in your True Voice. In the madness of today’s electronic media deluge, your customers can easily find your competitors. If they don’t find what they need on your website fast, they’re gone in the blink of a Google search. If they can’t figure out very quickly why they would want to choose you as their vendor, they’ll find a site that does speak to them.

And it’s a fact that even buyers of the most competitive products, even at the biggest corporations, want to check out vendors’ websites before they call—even when the vendor’s been personally referred. Think of it like a courtship for an arranged marriage: the boy wants to sneak a peek at the girl before deciding to invite her out for the first time.

Turning Interest into Commitment

In business, the buyer wants to know something more about you and your business before he talks to you. He’s looking for information, yes. But, like the boy checking out the girl, he wants to get a feeling as well. This intangible quality about your business can only be conveyed when your website speaks from the heart, speaks about what truly matters to you in terms of serving your customers.