Why great marketing is like brushing your teeth.

You don’t get up in the morning, brush your teeth and say, “Whew, that’s done! Don’t have to worry about that for another month.” Think of marketing like brushing your teeth. You don’t brush your teeth once a month or once a week. You brush your teeth every day, twice a day, maybe three times a day. Just like brushing your teeth, you’ve got to focus on your marketing every day. You can’t go to an event and say, “OK, I’ve done my marketing for the month.” Nope. You’ve got to do a little bit every day. Make a phone call each day to a referral source. Send an email. Write a note. Go to lunch. Have a beer. Play a game of golf. Go shopping.

Here’s the other thing about brushing your teeth and marketing. You don’t have to think about brushing your teeth. It’s a habit. A good habit. I want you to make marketing a habit, something you do without thinking about it.

One of my clients told me recently that she’d been approached by a partner from a large business law firm. She’s a sole practitioner with a successful entertainment law practice. She’s worked in big firms before and has no desire to go back. She told me that a year ago she would have said, “No, thank you,” and that would have been that. But now, she says, “I told him that I appreciated the offer, but wanted to keep my own firm. Then I told him I’d love to have lunch with him and find out how we could each help each other. I never used to think that way.” When you make marketing a habit, you’ll begin to see marketing opportunities everywhere.