The 3 Habits Of Marketers

I cannot think of any habits that I have currently, other than my caffiene addiction, which I’m in denial about the negativity to my health. It may be a little odd, but I vividly remember learning about habits during a pre-kindergarten lesson. They were describe as bad and frankly, in Pre-K unhygienic Granted, most children in pre-K aren’t the cleanest human beings, but having bad habits such as nail biting, thumb sucking, nose picking etc. were the big “no-no’s” of the habit lessons when I was younger.

I noticed a couple of my little girl friends in my class participated in one of the habits in biting their nails. I wondered why were they doing it? If it really was such a bad habit why did they continue to gnaw at their nails?

So I tried it myself. Unfortunately, I did it right in front of my mother who was the biggest advocate in instilling that nail-biting was not something I should do. It was one of the times my mother moved faster than the speed of light. My hand was immediately swatted away before my teeth could chomp down on the nail. It’s safe to say I learned my lesson and fortunate that I do not have nail-biting as a habit.

Like I mentioned before, other than my current habit of 2+ cups of coffee a day, I can’t pinpoint other ones; however the notion of habits was once again spurred after reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhingg.

Duhingg plunges into habits, how they stick and how are brain interacts with them. And so it spurred thoughts on my own different habits as a marketer beside my coffee one.

I think I’m safe to assume each marketer probably has their own set of habits normal or abnormal; however, these three are the most distinct that I’ve noticed throughout.

First, always checking data.

As a marketer or any technical person for the matter, when was the last time you checked the different pieces of data you were analyzing. Oh. 5 minutes ago…oh ok so 10 seconds ago? Or maybe you are getting the strong urge to check it right as you are reading it. Me too. As a matter of fact, I just checked something on TrackMaven before I wrote this sentence. oops.

There are over 2.7 Zetabytes of data existing in the digital universe today and marketers, for good reason, are obsessed with data. When was the last time it did you wrong? Ok, maybe data could be negativity or you as the data user could do data wrong, but data drives information and then helps us as marketers see the insights we need in order to take the competitive advantage or helps fuel our own marketing efforts. Checking the data you are monitoring is essential in seeing the progress of different efforts and then using those pieces of data for visualization, customer progress and/or the overall user experience. Or in my case, not only checking data on our marketing mixes, but it also migrated out of my outside of work life…EX: Plugging in my Jawbone UP Band more than twice a day to confirm I’m on track with my step goal. Only 7,000 more steps to go…

Checking data may be a habitual task for marketers and sometimes providing an ounce of distraction like any habit; however, without data there is zero growth for your marketing efforts.

The second habit of marketers goes hand in hand with always checking data — always testing.

Marketing 101 = Test, test, test, test, test, and test some more. Here at TrackMaven, we’re obviously running tests as you read this email in order to improve the best way to market to our potential customers. When was the last time you changed a color of a button, the wording of a headline, or the targeting of a audience in your ads? Not far in the past, right? What was worked in that test and what didn’t? Clearly this test went a wonky direction.

Following the cliche of nothing is in fact perfect, neither is your marketing and you have to test the different components in order to find the best fit for your audience at the time. Ever marketer wants pull the right levers to fuel the funnel and capture the most qualified leads for their said product and in order to do that marketers will always have the urgency to test the right parts to generate a hopefully successful outcome.

Lastly, marketers are packrats or maybe to put it nicely, curators collecting valuable pieces of data and information to keep FOREVER.

When I see a piece of content that I like or find advantageous, I’ll read it, take a couple notes and then save it for later….and by later I mean whenever I go looking for the information again or whenever I clean my bookmarks up (which I haven’t cleaned since January.) Whether it’s in a Google Spreadsheet, through an RSS reader, such as Feedly, Evernote, or maybe even Pinterest, I bet you have pieces of content that you have collected to either share, read or reference. It’s become a seamless part of your routine and a habit you shouldn’t shake.

Maybe it just my own packrat-ness, but every marketer must have the propensity to curate and share the pieces of content they collect. Curating content is something you must have in your own content strategy as it only helps engagement, link-building, SEO and helps expand your overall network as well.

Marketer will always check data, test and collect content. They are all habits that will not be broken…with me just mentioning them you’re bound to do one of the following habits right after this email.

What are your own marketing habits? Are these true for you? Let me know in the comments below, tweet me (@sabelharris), or send some characters Maven’s way (@TrackMavenApp).