As a marketer, people are paying you for the firm’s most important job (next to innovation): finding customers – at the lowest possible cost.

Finding customers is an art and a craft. The art is your work’s beauty: the creative, the intuitive. The truth is, marketing art is your hobby. What you are being paid for is the craft of finding customers on demand, on time, on budget – again, and again.

Try This >> Whenever you can, enjoy the art of marketing. Indulge in creative work. Paint a colourful picture. Dream of the extraordinary. But then, face reality. Never lose sight of your real job: finding profitable customers.

If you must choose between boring work that does the job, and exciting work that doesn’t, go for the former.

(From my Marketing Week column)