It is the first week of January. You know what that means: anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, workout more or generally get healthier will be rushing out to the gym. This is the time of the year that drives the regular fitness folks crazy. All the weight rooms, elliptical machines and swimming pools are clogged with newcomers, most of whom will be gone by the end of the month. Welcome to January: the month that begins with the best of intentions but fizzles before you can count out 31 wintery days.

Why do we often fall short on New Year’s resolutions? I suppose you could blame a lack of discipline. The truth is, there is a lot of hard work for most people to lose any significant weight and to get in shape. It takes repetition and time before you see results. You have to trust the long process. Nothing of significance is ever achieved without the discipline that sticks it out to the end. The same could be said of marketing.

Two important themes are a part of marketing discipline and should be a part of your strategy if your marketing is to work. The first is consistency. Consistency in your marketing includes making sure your brand follows a style guide so it is never confused with another, but it also ensures your messaging is the same time and again. Many times, in the process of finding the right marketing message, companies interchange messages, like shuffling a deck of cards and dealing out different promotional phrases. If you call yourself one thing and then change to another, you create brand confusion with consumers. They don’t know who you are or what your brand is all about.

The second theme is persistence. We see so many marketing messages, that it is hard to remember one over another. That is why marketing messaging has to be repeated time and again. I used a word in the opening paragraph of this blog. Without looking back, let’s see if you remember what I said happened at the end of the 31 days of January. My guess is, you don’t remember that I said that it fizzles. That’s because you read right past that word without thinking much about it. But if I used the phrase, "January fizzles” multiple times while you are reading this, you would remember it. If "January fizzles” were part of a marketing campaign tied to a specific brand (let’s call it Blossom’s Coffee House), you would have a better than average chance of remembering not only the phrase, but the brand tied with it… Blossom’s Coffee House, where January Fizzles. The more you hear it, the more you don’t remember how you connected the two. Before long, you will find yourself finishing the phrase… Blossom’s Coffee House, where ___________   _________! Repetition makes marketing stick in our brains. It is part of the discipline of marketing needed to make your brand memorable.

There is a resolve to good marketing. If your branding is inconsistent, now is the time to fix it. Once you have your messaging established, get it in front of your target market often. No one ever got in shape by being inconsistent and stopping short of finishing. Neither has anyone successfully marketed their brand without being consistent and persistent. Resolve to see your marketing all the way through.