A good business model and a good marketing plan go hand in hand. They compliment each other like peanut butter and jelly--they may be fine on their own, but they taste much better together. Well-developed social media marketing in particular is a staple of modern business success. Whether you are new or seasoned in the marketing game, remembering the following marketing rules will allow you to reach your company’s goals successfully:

1. Not even the best marketing can improve a bad product or service.

Although experts have confirmed the fact that successful marketing ultimately contributes the largest amount of success to a business, it is common sense that people won’t want your business if it isn’t quality. Apple Inc. has arguably the most elegant marketing campaign of most businesses, but one can see how the effect of their marketing strategy would lose its touch if they technology wasn’t genuinely good.

Drawing people to your business is only the first step--drawing them back is the second and equally important step, and it all depends on their experience. Keep in mind that word-of-mouth remains one the biggest factors in a business’s success. Also keep in mind that higher quality products/services provide the freedom to increase prices, and depending on the success of your marketing campaign, substantially more profits.

2. People can sense authenticity and respond positively to it.

Any company people can trust is going to fare far better than a company they feel like they can’t. Even companies that offer better prices will probably do worse than competitors who appear more authentic and therefore more trustworthy. Honesty is a huge component of trustworthiness. If the consumers smell a fish in the water, it is time to re-evaluate.

Marketing is an opportunity to let your company’s voice be heard, and that voice should be real. This may be easier for small businesses, as they tend to come across as more caring, but one must remember large corporations have hearts as well. After all, they too started off as small businesses, and companies have roots. Business size does not have to be an indicator of ethics. Regardless, emphasizing the fact that your business is run by real people who are in it for more than the money will always attract more people to your cause.

3. Keep open ears--remember to listen and respond to consumers.

Have you ever been to a store where the employees treated you dismissively, or struggled to communicate with salty customer service reps? Odds are you did your business elsewhere from then on. As a customer (or client), there is nothing worse than feeling unimportant and unvalued. The saying “the customer is always right” has a definite amount of truth behind it. Whether or not the customer is a quote-on-quote “ideal” customer is not necessarily relevant--every last customer is of value to your business. You may consider employing marketing strategies that seek to respond to common customer concerns and re-establish any lost faith. For example, if consumers are concerned about the potential dangers of your product, post something or create an ad that clarifies it is safe or emphasizes the importance of safe use.

Additionally, anticipating what the customer might want or like ahead of time and giving it to them is a win-win solution. Ask yourself what your consumers would be pleased by--a new innovative product, perhaps, or even something as simple as having direct communication with the communication. The communication can be quite light-hearted. Have some fun with it! Make people know that you care about them and want to develop positive relations.

4. Look beyond the data.

If your company is trying to target a certain audience, and all your social media posts and ads clearly reflect this incentive, it is going to come across as selective. Nobody likes reading droll posts that only someone in the industry would understand, or sitting through a commercial that has nothing to do with them. Although they can’t technically be described as marketing, those annoying commercial run by lawyers targeting the few amount of people who might be able to take part in a class-action lawsuit are a perfect example of exactly what not to do when marketing; indeed, if you could list everything wrong with those commercials (such as impersonality and boringness) and create something that was the complete opposite, you would be well on the road to success.

Companies that appear to only care about drawing in certain people--regardless or not of whether they actually do--are not favorable. Even if your company is selling cat food, you should try to find a way to make the marketing accessible and open to dog owners, should they choose to get a cat. Appealing to everyone may be impossible but something as simple as throwing in the line “for pet lovers everywhere” could make all the difference. Otherwise, they have no reason to pay attention and will forget about you completely, when instead they may recall you later on and bring in business. As the experts teach, just one really effective ad can stay in someone’s subconscious and bubble up again when the time comes.

5. Make media content widely accessible.

This is a fairly simple concept but quite possibly the most crucial of all. When people have a need that your company can fulfill, it should be easy for them to find you. This means having a prevalent website that is connected to a variety of social media accounts, which are likewise all linked together. By strengthening the connections between different platforms--whether it be Facebook, Google, Youtube, email, television, etc.--you increase brand-name recognition, and therefore, success.