Content from my upcoming book:
The Perfect Storm
How I Reinvented Convenience Store Marketing At Sheetz
by Tim Lazor
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hphbBVHw0C8&t=14s
Principle 1. Decide On—Then Protect --Your ‘Proactive’ Marketing Mindset
Only you can do this. You must decide to always have a proactive marketing-first mindset, then protect your decision from the forces of entropy. Constantly making decisions that move marketing initiative forward creates work, disruption, problems, risk—and success and rewards.
YOUR People will fight you, not follow up, slow walk. And wear your down. Resist these forces and insist your company is embracing a marketing mindset forever.
Principle 2. Uncover How You Create Value & Why You Are Different
Retail marketing succeeds when you’ve taken time to create real and new value for customers, and differentiated it in the marketplace to customers. The ultimate secret is this: You are the difference. You are the storm.
Principle 3. Create & Execute Your Marketing Plan From Value & Differentiation
Your marketing or promotional plan doesn’t have to be long…it has to be strategic, powerful and simple to execute under pressure and chaos. And it has to be written (even six pages) so it can be shared, communicated and committed to by your team. No exceptions.
Principle 4. Build A Marketing Team With Your Ideology, Not Paper
4. Implementing Your Convenience Store Retail Marketing Plan is a team sport. Be precise in picking your team, and what each teammate will specifically do for the company. (Not themselves. Not their portfolio. Not their Linkedin page)
Principle 5. Love Your Money Machine (Oil The Gears)
Your store is a value-creating & money-making machine. Maintain it. Love it. Improve it. Most important, use your marketing machine to communicate and sell to customers moving through it. And clean your fucking bathrooms.
Principle 6. Measure Your Marketing Budget & Its Sales Results
Be precise and exact in what you decide to measure from your marketing program and budget: It eliminates opinions, delays and chaos, and delivers helpful data for future decisions.
Principle 7. Keep Innovating & Creating More Problem-Solving Value For Customers.
The closer you are (and stay close) to hearing your customers’ needs and opinions, the more innovative your company and its marketing will be in the future. You’ll be un-copyable, un-stoppable and extremely profitable.