Marketing's Silver Bullet

A few years ago I ran a survey of my local network and my in-house mailing list — dead simple, one question: “From a marketing perspective, what is the one thing you could be doing better?” Several hundred people answered. And to my genuine surprise, one word showed up, in one form or another, in about two-thirds of the responses.

That word was consistency. Or, to be precise, the lack of it. Consistency in making calls. Consistency in outbound. Consistency in follow-up. Consistency in — you name it. Nearly everyone already knew what their biggest marketing problem was, and it wasn't a missing tactic or a secret channel. It was that they couldn't manage to keep doing the things they already knew they should.

There is a silver bullet (I changed my mind)

You've heard the phrase “silver bullet” used two ways. The first is the fantasy — the one magic move that fixes everything overnight, usually attached to weight loss or getting rich. The second is the weary disclaimer: “This isn't a silver bullet, because of course there's no such thing.” For years I nodded along with that second one. And then I came to disagree with both of them, because after thirty years I'm convinced there is a silver bullet — and that survey only confirmed it. Here it is:

Now, if you were hoping for something you execute once so your world transforms by Friday, I've just disappointed you. But sit with those three lines and the good news reveals itself: it's simple. It makes perfect sense. The catch — and there's always a catch — is that simple doesn't mean easy. That gap, between simple and easy, is exactly where structure earns its keep. Let me take the three parts one at a time.

Do the right things

In sales and marketing, there are best practices that are time-tested — much of this very category is a catalog of them. Know your market and sharpen your message. Deliver real value. Build a simple funnel. Stay in front of the people who already showed interest. Doing the right things means grounding yourself in fundamentals like these instead of chasing every shiny new tactic that rolls through your feed. The fundamentals aren't glamorous, but they're the ones that actually compound.

Do them right

Knowing the right thing to do isn't the same as doing it well. Execution matters as much as intention. Take a small analogy from my own life: I know perfectly well that eating sensibly and staying active are the right things — but how I go about them (for me, a certain rhythm that fits how I'm actually built) is what determines whether they work at all. The same is true in your marketing. The right practice, executed sloppily, produces nothing. I've said for years that the most common mistake people make with referrals isn't failing to ask — it's failing to ask properly. Doing the right thing the wrong way still gets you a whole lot of nothing. And yes, doing it right usually takes some trial and error. What worthwhile thing doesn't?

Do them every day

Here is where most of us trip — and I'll put myself at the front of that line. First, let me take the pressure off: “every day” isn't meant literally. It means consistently, at a cadence you can actually sustain. (My own exercise habits are a fine idea I execute unevenly, so I'm preaching to myself here as much as anyone.) But when it comes to marketing, the principle turns blunt and non-negotiable: you cannot build name recognition without touching your market in some way, on a regular basis. That isn't my opinion. It's simply how attention works. When people pour everything into short-term results, get disappointed, and quit, they've reduced their marketing to what we call random acts — and it's a bit like planting seeds, watering once, and expecting a harvest overnight.

The weak link, for most of us, isn't knowing the right things or even doing them right. It's staying at it after the novelty wears off and the calendar fills up. That's the real catch hiding inside the silver bullet: it isn't a one-time act, it's a daily discipline — and some days will go better than others. That's allowed. Quitting isn't.

Why consistency is the marketing factor

Here's why this one thing outranks all the clever tactics. Recognition and trust are cumulative — they're deposits, not a single grand gesture. Trust isn't built in one interaction; it's built over time, through repeated moments of value. That, right there, is the mechanism by which a stranger comes to know you, then like you, then trust you enough to buy. Every stage of that journey runs on repetition. Which means consistency isn't one nice-to-have among many — it's the engine sitting under the entire funnel. Starve it, and every other tool in this category sputters. Feed it, and they all start to work.

What this means to you is almost anticlimactic: stop hunting for the trick. The businesses quietly winning around you usually aren't doing something you've never heard of. They're doing the known things, reasonably well, without stopping. (And yes — this same rule reaches far beyond marketing, into health, faith, and just about any goal worth having. But that's a fuller conversation for another day. For now, aim it at your marketing.)

How Prospect & Flourish approaches this

In the program, Module III's work on Know, Like & Trust marketing closes right here, on consistency, because it's the point of the whole unit. The funnel, the lead magnets, the retargeting — none of them amount to much without the steady, repeated effort that carries people through them. And this is precisely why we lean so hard on structure and systems: not because systems are exciting, but because willpower and good intentions collapse the moment life gets busy, and a system doesn't. Structure exists to make consistency survivable. That's the whole reason it's in the program — it's how you keep firing the silver bullet on the days you don't feel like it.

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