Today’s sage marketing advice is inspired by a collection of aphorisms from the work of Baltasar Gracian.

Public Relations & Perception

Things you do, do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem to have worth and to know how to show it, is to be worth double. Go Forth.

The Art of Selling

Know how to sell your wares. Their intrinsic worth is not enough. Remember customers run where the crowd is, running because the others run.

It is a great art to know how to sell, at times by praise because praise excites desire, but claiming that your goods are intended for the sophisticated only, as to whet the public appetite. For everyone thinks himself sophisticated.

Social Engagement

Be not infatuated with your own voice. Small comfort is paid to be satisfied with yourself, if you do not satisfy others.  Listen and engage.

Monitoring Your Value Proposition

A business at it’s best, you did not create. Strive daily to develop your organization by improving your offerings.

Place yourself in the middle of things to get to the heart of the matter.

Be open to suggestion. Nothing is so perfect that at times might need a monitor, for he is incurably the fool, who will not listen.

Crisis PR

In crisis it makes sense to let things settle, especially when the private and public sea is turbulent.

Your Brand Voice

Always be charming. Charm is the courteous way about in every business and the polite way out of every embarrassment.

Normal will get you nowhere

Never should your business be accounted easy or ordinary, for to make a thing ordinary is to make it common.  All have an itch for the unusual.

Marketing Operations

Add perfection to performance. Embrace the art of execution. Analyze all. Fools always rush in, for fools are rash. The wise enter with great care so that projects may make progress. Let foresight lead the way.

Staying Relevant

Know your unlucky days, for such there are.  Be aware, that for all, there are days when nothing goes right.

Be Generous

Never cry about your woes, instead, display a greatness of feeling and convert victory into unexpected generosity.

 Distinctive Branding

Rate the intensive, about the extensive. The perfect does not lie in quantity, but in quality. All that is best is always scant, and rare, for mass in anything cheapens it. Some judge books by their thickness, as though they had been written to exercise the arms, instead of the mind. Bigness alone, never gets beyond the mediocre, and is the curse of the universal man, that in trying to be everything, he is nothing.

It is quality that bestows distinction, and in heroic proportions if the substance is sublime.

Have helpful spirits around you. Draw sages about your counsel.  The Market Council.