This week’s 5-Minute Read is inspired by a podcast I was listening to on my way home (if you don’t listen to the Freakonomics podcast, you should).

In this particular episode the host was chatting to Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago and the author of the famous ‘index card’ which simplified the rules of personal finance down to nine short sentences.

The story goes, Pollack—in an effort to prove that Wall Street advice is unnecessarily complicated—grabbed an index card and jotted down the nine financial rules he lives by.

After posting it on his blog, it went viral and demonstrated that (when it comes down to it) simplicity will always win out over ‘sounding clever’.

So, with that in mind, I’m here today to keep it simple (and take a card out of Pollack’s book).

The nine basic rules of marketing:

1. Think about ROI before you start ANYTHING (and value it more than anything else). 
2. Be authentic—regardless of if you’re B2B or B2C, these days it’s all about H2H (human-to-human) marketing. People relate to people. 
3. Make sure your website receives regular updates (and if you don’t have a website, get one).
4. Research your audience…who they are, what they do, where they are online, what they value. Remember: Knowledge is power.
5. Be specific. There’s no point in trying to be all things to all people.
6. Try new things. How do you expect your potential clients to notice you when you’re blending into the background?
7. Shout about why you’re great. Be truthful with the service you can provide and don’t restrict yourself in the pursuit of humility.
8. REUSE, REPURPOSE & RECYLE—don’t double up on your efforts.
9. Have a plan—“random acts of marketing” won’t grow your business. 

These are the nine rules we live by here at JTN. They guide our everyday and bigger picture strategy and mean that we always approach projects with the right information, the right focus, and a plan that gets the job done.

And done well, I might add—after flat income for a number of years, we helped an agency client double their business revenue within nine months of working with us.

Feel free to print them out and nail them to your wall!

P.S. We offer one-to-one Marketing consulting services, with a focus on your business growth, efficiency, and profitability. This gives you access to ‘on tap’ business advice and the latest marketing training materials.

If you’d like to know more about these services, check out our website or drop me an email on [email protected]. I’d be happy to walk you through the service and answer any questions you have.