Marketing Law 1 - Leadership

No matter what you're selling, being the trailblazer always gives you a significant advantage. With rapid innovation and constantly shifting consumer trends, you can't afford to sit back and wait for perfection to arrive. By embracing this first law of leadership and acting decisively, you position yourself as a true leader in your industry and give yourself an amazing chance at success.

By being the first to market, you can establish yourself as the industry leader and set the standard for future competition. It takes guts to be the first one out there, but it can also guarantee the reward of a well-established brand.

If you’re not first, you’re last. Right? Well, not always. But in many cases, you might as well be last! Think of how many times you’ve had an idea for something, then saw it launched in your industry before you even had your sales pitch down. You weren’t first. Now you may as well be last.

We definitely believe that effective marketing ventures are better by strategic planning and making wise decisions based on data. This planning needs to happen quickly so that someone else doesn’t beat you to YOUR market with YOUR idea, allowing them to establish brand recognition and customer loyalty by the time you have your ducks lined up. Then what happens? If they beat you to the punch, it doesn’t mean that you’re out of the race. It just means that you now need to demonstrate how your idea or implementation is better or double-down and create a new sub-category and be the first there! Now you can start counting your new fat stacks of cash.

(Adapted from "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Ries & Trout)