Keeping Promises.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about keeping your promises.

My mother used to say, "Keep every promise you make, and only make promises you can keep." Whether I promised to clean my room before going outside to play hide and seek with my neighborhood pals, or if I promised to mow the lawn as soon as I got back from some early morning fishing at the little pond down the street, promises were used like standard currency. When a promise was broken or came up short, I then had a debt to pay, with interest.

If I was carrying a lot of debt from a string of too many broken promises, my credit became maxed out and no further promises could be accepted until I proved that the value of my word had regained its equity. I learned that the only way to maintain a reasonable credit rating was to keep my word and do what I said I would do, by when I said I would do it. Anything less than that was considered a partial payment and only added to the principal.

In marketing, many companies make incredible claims and offers to attract and convince customers. Yet, so many companies, in every industry and sector, repeatedly and continuously break their promises. As a result, consumers struggle to trust any of them. I suppose you could say that their claims really were incredible.

Every day, I see special promotions that offer the world, and then a tiny little asterisk takes it all away. Countless TV advertisements make improbable promises, and then they flash an entire paragraph of disclaimers on the screen, which is so small it cannot be read. The same is true on radio. They shout off about their amazing blowout sale and then hire a fast-talking lawyer to speed through the truth.

It has been said that in business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality. You can make all the claims you wish, and use all the fancy marketing tactics you want, but unless the product or service makes good on the promise, you will lose your credibility. I encourage you to take a look at the promises you have been making in your marketing and ensure that you are doing as today's fortune says, "If you promise someone something, keep it."