The Drift Marketing Manifesto is something that originated on our internal wiki — but since a lot of people have been interested in the way that we do marketing (and because, well, we believe that everything is marketing) we figured it was time to make this deck public.
By definition, a manifesto is “a public declaration of policy.”
But since I would never say those words to you outloud in-person, let me rephrase it: the these are the things that guide how we do marketing, from the way that we write, to how we think about product launches, design, and more.
The Drift Marketing Manifesto
1) Be remarkable. There’s so much noise out there today. The only way we can compete is by always asking “how can I make this 10x better than anything thing else out there?”
2) Words are everything. Every sentence we write should feel handcrafted.
3) Design is secondary. We love design, but until all the words are awesome, we don’t even think about design.
4) Write like you talk. We are writing for people, so if you wouldn’t say it out loud to a friend, don’t say it in your copy. Write to be understood, not to be an amazing writer.
5) No jargon. Again, we’re writing for people. So write with simple words. Unless 99% of our customers would know the word, don’t use it.
6) Be human. People have learned to tune out marketing that feels like marketing. So all of our marketing should feel like it’s coming from a friend.
7) Be specific. We love people, but people need instructions. So in your marketing, tell people exactly what you want them to do, and make it easy for them to do it.
8) Customer-driven, not company driven. We do things for our customers above all else. Not for us.
9) Trust is everything. We can never break the trust of our audience. So that means we don’t ever do things like buy lists and spam people.
10) Validated learning over opinions. That means we let our customers decide, not our own opinions.
11) Lean development. Not agile. Not waterfall. Just like our product team, that means we ship things in real time — and ship based on customer feedback. Not just because our roadmap or content calendar said so.
12) Good marketing vs bad marketing. Good marketing is showing, not telling. This is one of those things where you know it when you see it.
13) Everything is marketing. Marketing isn’t just our website, our blog, or the emails we send — it’s everything we do.
Here’s the full deck. And if you’d like to tweet about our marketing manifesto, that would be pretty cool. Here’s a tweet you can use.