Your Most Important Marketing Tool

What's the most important marketing tool you can use?

Web site? No.

Twitter? No.

Direct Mail? No.

Personal Networking? No.

Answer: Your reputation!

I believe your reputation for providing quality service or a quality product at a fair price will generate the most valuable form of marketing and advertising: word-of-mouth.

Other forms of advertising and marketing are still useful. They can distribute your reputation faster, farther and to more of your target market.

If you have a good reputation then word-of-mouth multiples in effectiveness. If you have a bad reputation then positive marketing will get more expensive.

Reputations take time to build. Be patient. If you're new in business - like less than three years old - then make sure you've got success stories and satisfied customers who want to spread the word.

Paying for marketing help and advertising does offer strategic benefits, though.

I've considered calling this "Reputation Marketing."

What you're really trying to do is market your positive reputation and your strengths.

I've thought about this after working with Barbera Properties, a professionally run apartment rental company operating in Pasadena, South Pasadena, Monrovia and other nearby cities. They even have a video on their management philosophy.

Barbera Properties has a management philosophy that focuses on treating the tenant, or customer, as a partner. This means when a tenant has a service request the Barbera Properties maintenance team responds quickly instead of investigating to see if the tenant is actually telling the truth.

Certainly there are tenants who'll take advantage of the service and complain when it's not warranted.

But the response also results in good will and earns customer respect and greatly increases the chance to benefit from word-of-mouth marketing.

So the first rule of reputation marketing: provide excellent customer service.