Your gargoyles say more about your brand than you may think. They are your front line. If your marketing doesn’t match, you’re asking for trouble.

I recently responded to a blog article written by Kay Ross, who wrote about the faces we put forward in a marketing message. Kay’s article is titled “In Your Marketing, To Thine Own Self Be True“, and it reminded me of many observations I have made about the overall feel of companies during my career, and personal encounters.

That “feel” of a company is what makes up a brand, and when it’s done well it involves every aspect of the company, and extends far beyond the marketing department. I want to share some thoughts about your brand, and I believe you will be able to relate to this from both a consumer and business viewpoint.

The topic which was addressed in Kay’s blog came from one of her subscribers who asked the question as follows: “Which is more important when communicating with your audience: say things you really want to say, or say things that people want to hear?”

Should there really be such a disparity between the two? If the marketing is reaching the appropriate audience, it should not have to be one or the other. The way I interpreted this question, it led me to imagine the question as whether it is acceptable to fake it in your marketing. If you know my brand at all, you can place your bets now about where I stand.

I turned forty today. I’m happy about it, too. It doesn’t really feel like forty quite yet, but I’ve done it! I have lived long enough to have some well-earned gray hair, and a good amount of wisdom that comes with it. For such a young guy, of course.

My forty years have come with a lot of lessons. Having spent well over half of those years as a marketing professional and business owner, I’ve learned a lot about marketing. I’ve shared large volumes of my experiences here on the Internet, and I feel great to say that I’ve helped a lot of people with that experience.

One of the things I learned about marketing is the value of brevity. Keep it short. Keep it easy. Don’t get too confusing with all of your wordiness. I learned it, and then I threw it out the window for the purpose of this blog. Brevity matters when you are selling something, but I am not. If you can embrace some blatant verbosity today, I’ll reward you with some valuable real life marketing lessons.

If you’re in the field of marketing, get over yourself. You’re a commodity. At least that is the way a lot of people will see it, even if you actually are as awesome as you say you are.

Looking at marketing as a commodity is something people can understand. That’s because if they see it all the same, it just comes down to the dollar amount, and that is what feels the safest for most people.

As it applies to the majority of people buying marketing services, the dollars which are easiest to concentrate on are the dollars going out, but without adequate forethought or examination of the incoming dollars the marketing produces.

It seems that a lot of people think of it like throwing those dollars to the wind and hoping some of them will float back.

That’s not the way it works when marketing is done well, but it is the easier way to digest. In the real world of business, marketing should be based on qualified mathematics, demographics, psychographics, and other principles of qualified market research and forecasting, but that is enough to make most people’s head explode. That kind of marketing comes with an investment and a commitment beyond commodity-style thinking about marketing. Many people confuse that as a risk, while the real risk is when marketing is based on guesswork and crossing fingers.

Every blogger and every user of any other social media platform has a goal. There is always something … an outcome that they hope for and work toward. Whether that outcome is making a friend, or making a sale, there is a goal.

Those goals are each different, and they are often not entirely clear to the individual, but one common thread is that we all want people to read what we have to say.

With any luck, they will subscribe, come back, read more, add their replies, and click “Like”, “Tweet”, and all those other buttons to share it with their friends.

Luck isn’t enough! They will need reasons, and everybody has their own … reasons. It is your task to find those reasons, and I have some ideas that I truly believe can help you.

I’ll give you the bottom line, right up front. In business, if you are doing something that you would never pay somebody else to do, stop it!

I think this should be obvious, but then, obvious is not so obvious, and common sense is not so common. That is the main emphasis of this article, so if you decide to stop here without further consideration, you’ve got the bulk of the benefit.

This is not just about content curation, or any one specific tactic that somebody told you may be a good practice for your marketing goals … this is about all of them. If there is something you are doing in your business pursuits, but you would never in a million years see the value in hiring somebody to do it for you, stop doing it, and get back to doing things that actually build your business.