Ryan Hardesty

I have worked in advertising and marketing related fields for the last ten years and have seen so many things change. The main changes have been from the power that the Internet has given anyone to market for pennies. The rules of marketing have never changed but the tools are changing everyday. Here are a few rules that you should make sure your business is following in regards to your marketing.

Relationships Rule
Building and maintaining relationships is one of your most powerful tools that you have in your marketing toolbox. Web 2.0 has made this much easier and trackable for anyone with a computer and a Internet connection. Used correctly social networks, blogs, and email can help you to build powerful relationships with you customers. But remember these are only tools and should never replace the most powerful relationship building tool... connecting with your customers face to face.

Credibility
Creditability is so important in our world of rip offs and scams. The best test of how customers will view your creditability is how you company googles. This is not a question of SEO or placement but a question of what are other people on the web saying about you.

Recently I sat in a meeting with a company who has a great product and amazing customer loyalty but they have a problem pulling in new potential customers because they don't score well on the google creditablilty test. The owner of the company has never paid much attention to this because he thought that their website with great search engine placement was enough. He was wrong.

Interacting with your customers on social media and blogs is a great way to build your google credibility footprint. The more positive interactions you can publicly have with your customers the better.

Top of mind
Their are many good ways to keep top of mind awarness with your customers. Flashing your brand on the TV, Radio, Magazines and the Web are great but expensive ways to keep top of mind awareness. The most cost effective I have found is through social media and email. You can use these to interact with you customers, ask/answer questions and reenforce your relationships. Lance Armstrong does a great job of this via Twitter. Check out his tweets at http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong.