Today marks a special anniversary of sorts. This is the 676th Nailing Post I have written. That may mean nothing to you, but if you do the math, that is 13 years of blogging once a week about marketing. What started as an experiment to see if there was any interest in tidbits of marketing advice has become my weekly assignment as we have circled the sun 13 times.

What exactly have I learned about marketing by writing all those blogs? In honor of 13 years of Nailing Posts, here are my baker’s dozen of marketing tips.

1. Trust is a precious gem in marketing. If you can get your customers to trust what you say in your marketing, you will find success in business. Trust is built over time. That’s why it is important to keep your marketing in front of your target market.

2. Find out what you do better than anyone else and promote it. Make it a core message of everything you say in marketing. Brand it and make it stick in the minds of your customers.

3. Stay true to your core message, but don’t let the delivery of your message become stale. Marketing messages have to change from time to time to stay fresh. It is lazy to keep doing the same thing in marketing year after year. People get bored when they’ve seen the same piece of marketing again and again. Stay consistent in your core message, but find different ways of saying it.

4. Know your customers well. It will help you to stay close to your customers – close enough that you can detect a change in their attitudes towards trends in the marketplace.

5. Be different than the competition. When others zig, you should zag. Looking like everyone else in marketing is never a good thing. If there is no distinction between you and the competition in the eyes of the consumer, you will find yourself in a bidding war to get to the lowest price.

6. Marketing is more than making things look good. Creative services are needed in marketing, but there is much more to it than just winning a blue ribbon at the art exhibit. Consumers are looking for more than a pretty picture of your company’s products and services, they want a brand that will fix their problems.

7. Strategic marketing plans are essential if you want to be successful in marketing. Never make marketing an off-the-cuff, gut-reaction endeavor. If you do, you will forever be chasing this way and that without any real direction. Determine who you are selling to, define your brand in terms of its best qualities and promote it where it exceeds the competition in meeting a consumer need.

8. Measure your success in marketing. You should know how your marketing has made new customers for you and how you have retained the customers you already had.

9. Measure your failure in marketing too. Marketing is not an exact science and some efforts fall short of expectations. Chart and report this so you don’t keep throwing money at underachieving marketing efforts.

10. Don’t put your marketing eggs all in one basket. We live in an age when marketing mediums are plentiful and continuous. It is important to diversify your marketing to use more than one medium to reach a larger segment of your target market.

11. Don’t discount marketing some basic business services surrounding your brand. Services such as the availability of products, fast delivery and stellar customer service are very attractive to consumers.

12. Never market on price alone. You may be the low-price leader in your industry, but consumers will expect more than just a cheap price. There was a time when you could get away with cheap prices and consumers would put up with poor quality, slow service, lack of technology, etc. Those days are gone. People demand more.

13. Never take your customers for granted. The first time you take the position that consumers need you more than you need them, you will be on your way to closing your doors.

In closing, let me thank some people. Over the years, I have found (or maybe they found me) a loyal group of followers who take a look at my latest offering every Thursday. Thanks for taking the time to read my rants and ramblings about marketing and life. Also, my editors over those thirteen years, Jaime, Ashley, Becky and Selena, have made me sound better than I would have on my own. Thank you!

And now, it is time to get to writing while we do a few more laps around the earth.