The biggest challenge for marketing people bar none is trying to get business to understand what patience and consistency means.

Marketers are akin to fitness trainers as in  we have to train people to get used to pain and sacrifice ‘upfront’ and to enjoy the benefits later, when we all live in a society that excels at selling convenience, to have it all now and pay the bank back from your future.

Not one marketer I have ever met has not had the “But we paid you for brand exposure, we posted a blog on your site and networks but we have not had any direct sales that have resulted from your marketing efforts!” gripe.

This  echoes the frustration felt by the Fitness coach who has to listen to a gym member bemoan that he has been going the gym for three weeks now and still has his belly!

If you got the Marketing CEO of Nike or Adidas and said; “What’s your brand budget this year in Billons? And can you tell me what are the direct Key Performance indicators from these colossal campaigns you expect to report?” They will just look at you like the Liverpool Football Club Manager would when being asked a question by a Sun tabloid reporter.

Successful and long lived businesses understand subliminal selling, they know that the battle of the brands is the one who spends the most to make people feel something about their brand.

Brand budgets always increase. They will never be able to tell you exactly how many people saw that TV advert they paid for, or how many saw that billboard, but they can tell you how much sales are up by!

Ask anyone why they bought an Apple over a Samsung, and they will look at you like you are stupid! Samsung buyers will give you the same sneer. You see both brands know their strengths and don’t really want to compete.

Get the Samsung and Apple marketing execs in one room then ask them to paint a picture of the basic customer I am pretty sure their paintings will be different, each know their place in the market they know who their existing and potential client is, what’s more they have known this from the start, and never let go of that definite target they are always aiming for. Then they flood the market with these emotions and feelings.

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This is why your one blog and expect sales attitude is ludicrous at best, and is the same as the  20 stone dude who went the gym once had a chat, cycled for ten minutes and blames the gym as to why he has not lost weight!

So how many blogs do I have to do before I see sales? is like a candidate asking how many paid holidays do we get for this job again? For any job interview, it’s not the right question, the right question should be:

We have so much budget set aside for the next two years what is the most effective way we can spend our money each month?

You have to be looking at Branding like a long term forecast so long term it will never stop, it’s like:

 ‘How much money will I spend on food in the next twenty years?

I don’t know, but I am sure going to do everything in my power to make sure I never stop spending on food as the consequences will be disastrous and fatal.

Your branding should be like your food, any other answer to this is a serious misunderstanding of what your brand means and what it does for your bottom line, like food it is fatal if you don’t feed it every single day!

The question is not; how many blogs till we get a sale? The answer I give to that is the same any diligent parent gives their child trying to learn life basics:

As long as it takes son, but you are learning many other things along the way right?

The real question should be:

How can we always make sure we have brand budget left each month? Because without a brand we have zilch, nada, sweet FA, and its back to the jobs we left to start on our own as failures!!

Your brand budget is your food for business!

Once you start blogging it’s a lifestyle change, when should you stop?

When you sell out or retire period!!

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