SOP 195 — Put the marketing principles ahead of the tactics

1. Act while the motivation is there

One line comes before the principles. If you get what you need from any of this, the preference stated is that you act on it while you are motivated, not wait until the motivation disappears. Motivation arrives in huge amounts but lasts only briefly, and the encouragement is to use it while it is there.

2. Be reminded more than taught

These principles are called worth repeating because they end up repeated so many times in work with entrepreneurs who have this constraint, and they are put up front because they can preload the actions that come later.

The first: being reminded matters more than being taught, and repeating matters more than innovating. It is a frustrating one, because people think they are so special and so creative that they thought of a great idea; it is why so many people complain that someone copied their idea. In the world of execution, ideas are not worth very much. It is far more about taking a huge, unrelenting amount of action over long stretches of time, which is what it takes for even a small number of people to know you exist.

It comes first for a reason. There may be things you hear that you have heard before; it is just that now is the right time to hear them. So drop the question is this new or not new? and ask instead: is this what I need right now? If it is, nothing is more valuable.

3. Run volume, and feed the box

The second is probably a very consistent theme: enough volume takes luck out of it. Sheer quantity becomes a quality in itself. What that means, more than anything, is that advertising is a game of massive assault.

The black box. Picture your business as a black box with your money model inside it, turning like a gear that makes money, and some input going into it. At bottom, business is nothing more than converting raw attention into money; that is the whole of it, and every business could fit that one simple picture. Once the box works, the question is why you are not putting as much into it as you possibly can. There are obviously a lot of reasons a business does not.

4. More is almost always the answer

A favorite saying here: if necessity is the mother of invention, repetition is what fathers skill. Sometimes you need to do more not only because not nearly enough people know about what you sell, but because you have to improve, and doing more is the only route to improving. So whatever the problem, the answer is almost always more, and even when you doubt that more is the answer, it probably still is. That is the quantity-against-quality view.

How far to push more before trying anything else, and the arithmetic of volume behind it, is SOP 187 — Exhaust more before anything else.

5. Make it about them, in their words

The next: when you look at anyone's advertising, outreach or content, make sure it is about them and not about you, and use their words, not your own.

With AI, researching forums, and the reviews of competitors' products and of your own, to pull out the sentiment is now one of the most valuable things you can do.

The practice described. One team reviewed all of its sales calls with AI. It could then see which actions had the highest likelihood of leading to a sale, and which pain points were actually the most common: not the ones the team thought, but the ones that actually came before a purchase. They turned out to be different from what was expected. The plan that followed was a new campaign for each of the pain angles raised most often by people who buy. It sounds obvious.

The view here is that a lot of marketing hoodoo distracts people from what matters, which is to be very specific: "You said you want this thing, and I can help you with this thing if you buy my thing." That is it. Everything else distracts from the core message: eyeballs in, dollars out.

6. Assume they know nothing and are in a hurry

A rule of thumb here: assume the reader has no idea who you are, what you do or how it works, is in a rush, and has a third-grade education. That set of assumptions, and the reading level that follows from it, is worked through on SOP 31 — Write at the right reading level, section 2.

Keep it specific over general, and think about the benefit of the benefit.

7. Two ways marketing goes wrong

These are very large marketing concepts. They are raised because, when most people's marketing is looked at, they are what is missing. The tactics come later, but if these are wrong, the tactics will not matter.

Not doing enough. If you are not doing enough, cannot stay on a marketing channel long enough, believe 10 outreaches a week will do, or expect five pieces of content a week to somehow grow the business, your expectation is wildly mismatched against reality.

Making it fancy. Another group needs to hear that you have to be specific and you have to be clear. Sometimes this happens with the more marketing-centered entrepreneurs, who think there is so much magic in it.

The midwit picture. A well-known joke picture has an idiot at one end, a smart person at the other (maybe with glasses on), and the midwit in the middle. Make sure you are not the midwit. Usually the idiot and the smart one agree, and the midwit is the one who gets everyone confused: what length should my ad run, when do I switch this color, I think the buttons changing and vibrating did it. The idiot says to tell people what you have and make sure they see it is meant for them; the smart one says the same. You go round the whole cycle only to end up at: be clear, get to the point.

8. Cut before you explain

It has been seen so many times: deletion will often beat explanation. Ask whether you really need to tell them about something, or whether you can just remove it. By the estimate here, nine times out of 10, when one practice reviews an underperforming sales script, what gets done is removal: cutting, and making it shorter. When it is shorter, you can be very clear about the point you are trying to make.

If you cannot say what your sales script is for, there is your problem; the same holds if you cannot say what the ad is for.

9. Three themes, with proof on top

Broken into three chunks:

You need a huge amount of volume.
You need to be clear: specific and not fancy, speaking in their language.
Proof.

Proof is still underrated. Show more, and document more, than you are doing now. Say what only you can say; show what only you can show. In one business, the reason its marketing is so effective, as its owner believes, is that it sets out to demonstrate, always: "How can I show first?"

No one believes. Fundamentally, the biggest issue in marketing is that no one believes, so everything done is to accomplish that one objective. Say you can help people cut their page load times. Everybody would want faster page loads, so why do people not buy from you? They do not believe you. That is it.

Put that at the top of the pyramid, before everything else: before the fancy copy, before the selling, before the tactics, before the money models. If you do not have enough leads, it is because no one believes you, and they disbelieve because you have shown them nothing and given them no reason.

10. The rule over the door

The number one rule of marketing in one practice: if marketing sat under one door, the words over it would be state the facts and tell the truth. The fix for weak proof is on SOP 110 — Claim your proof from the data, section 5; the rule and the same fix sit together on SOP 152, section 5.

What this adds: if the facts and the truth are not compelling, you do not bend the facts. You bend reality: you change your environment and what you want to show. Maybe that means you need to do more. Maybe you need to go and get 20,000 five-star reviews, because once you can simply say you have 20,000 five-star reviews, that one line gets you everything else you need.

Proof does not take long. In one example, an owner held back general business content until there was tangible proof of being legit, on the thinking: who would listen? That held even while other businesses were already running. Many of you, it is said, simply lack that proof, and it is not even slow to gather; you are just not gathering it. So go and gather it.

11. Brand as an investment

Brand is named as the final principle, and its case is put here in short. The view here is that brand is what helps you keep compounding your lead flow, keep getting more customers who want to spend more with you, who make more referrals and more repeat purchases; all of that is put down to brand.

	What it is like	What you get
The tactics	A paycheck	You do the work and you get paid
Brand	A retirement account or an investment	You put money in and do not really see anything for a while, until the passive income from the brand is greater than the income from your regular work, and from then on the brand outgrows anything you could do on a given day

It takes time, the way an investment does. Most people do not save and do not invest, because no one can delay gratification. If you can, the thing is that a brand takes far less time to build than 40 years of savings: a really good brand can be built in a couple of years. Yet most people's horizon stops at this week or this month, so the encouragement is to think a little longer.

12. Start with proof

In short, before any tactic: If you do not do enough, none of this matters. If you overcomplicate it and make it about you, instead of about them (their words, specific to their needs, clear over clever, getting to the point), none of it matters. And if you do not have enough proof, go and get more before you do anything.

One owner reports starting every business with proof before anything else, for two reasons:

To be more convinced of being really good at the thing.
To have everyone else convinced: why spend months trying to sell people before proving you can do it?

So prove you can do it, and the sales get far easier. A year on, you end up far ahead of the one who just tries to sell everyone who comes in with no practice. Doing more reps and documenting them gives far more practice than anything else.

13. What this page does not decide for you

The benefit of the benefit. What it means is not spelled out. Not established on this page.
The reasons a working business does not feed the box. They are said to be many, and none is named here. Not established on this page.

14. The checklist

Principle	What to do
Act	The preference stated: if you get what you need, act while the motivation is there
Reminded, not taught	Ask is this what I need right now?, not is this new?
Volume	Treat advertising as massive assault; ask why you are not putting as much as you can into a box that works
More	More is almost always the answer; when you think it is not, it is still probably more
Their words	About them, not you; research forums and reviews and pull out the sentiment; tell them you can help with the thing they said they want
Assumptions	No idea who you are, in a rush, a third-grade education; specific over general
Enough, and not fancy	Do not expect 10 outreaches or five pieces of content a week to be enough; be specific and clear, not the midwit
Deletion	Before explaining, ask whether it can be removed; know the point of each script and ad
Proof	Say and show what only you can; demonstrate first; they do not believe you until you show them or give them a reason
Facts	In one practice, state the facts and tell the truth; if they are not compelling, change reality
Brand	An investment that pays after a while; think past this week
Order	If you lack proof, get proof before anything else

15. Where this sits

Assuming the answer is more, and the question that opens it: SOP 40 — Choose the next growth move, section 2.
The volume lesson behind a test that was too small is on SOP 52, section 2.
Collecting the words a group uses for itself, from what advertisers in your category say: see SOP 32, section 3.
Comparisons that each set a stronger way of showing proof beside a weaker one are on SOP 109; a routine that keeps proof coming in is SOP 123 — Run the standing proof streams.
What a brand is, and how its reach is measured: SOP 92.
Why so few people know about your stuff, and what it costs to change that, is SOP 194 — Count what it costs to become known.

16. What this page does not cover

Tactics for getting leads, bucket by bucket for ads, organic content and outreach, are SOP 209 — Pick a lead bucket, starting with the offer and lead magnet. Which platforms to run them on first, by whether you sell to consumers or to businesses, is SOP 213, section 10. Which way of reaching people to work first is SOP 12, section 4.