3 Most Important Words of Marketing

A restaurant's success is contigent upon location, location and location. A website's success is contingent upon traffic, traffic and traffic. But what about marketing?

The three most important words of marketing are perception, perception, perception. The perception of your brand, product or service is the number one determining factor between success and failure.

Recall that a business must create value. Value is the relationship between the perceived benefit and the price. We all know that a candy bar costs pennies to produce. Yet, we perceive that the taste and our satisfaction is equal to or greater than $1, so we purchase.

Similar story regarding rocks. Martin Lindstrom, author of buy-ology, likes to talk about value with regards to rocks.

Try and sell an old rock you pick up from the street. Very difficult. What if that same rock is actually a moon rock? Or a piece of the Berlin Wall? Or maybe even a diamond? All of a sudden, the perception of that rock has changed and the value has increased.

So what do you sell? Is it any old rock or is it a diamond?

Create powerful perception around your product or service. Use marketing to shape the perception and promote the value you provide.