A good marketing expert has to capture and communicate the truth: what is at the heart of your brand? Who are you, why do you do what you do and why should anyone care?

So how does your business become a success? How do you use marketing to your benefit, while protecting your brand and making loads of moola?

Here are 4 tips on how to become better at marketing:

Carpet bomb London with 10,000 bananas

There's no point being the best at something and only letting your Mum know. And there's more weight behind showing you are the best, than shouting in peoples' faces I'M NUMBER ONE. If you sell the best bananas in the world, you can wait for the first person to buy one and eventually word of mouth will spread. By the end of week 1, you might be selling 10 bananas a day. OR, you can hire a plane, wear a Bananaman costume, and carpet bomb London with 10,000 free bananas attached to tiny parachutes that have your contact details on. By the end of that day, you'll be the number one banana distributor in the world - and it won't be you saying it, it will be everyone else.

More BLAM, less SPAM.

Nobody likes spam. Back when it was a food, it tasted horrible, ubiquitous and inescapable. And today when people receive spam emails, they get a horrible taste in their mouth, see spam everywhere and can't escape it. If you have an emailing list as a business, this list is gold dust, but it will soon crumble into complaints and thin air if you fail to be interesting to your audience. Never email the equivalent of your business taking a selfie with a load of money - think before you email. Send only emails that are going to interest your audience. Interesting articles on subjects they like. Link the articles back to your website. Drive traffic, and increase sales through being interesting.

Embrace the age of authentic marketing

This should really speak for itself - stop bullshitting. Stop lying. If you are selling a car, you can't say that it can fly and talk the language of cows...because you will soon be found out and your brand will be harmed. Focus on what you are selling, and if you can't think of something good to say about your product, then you need to improve your product. Never lie. Never exaggerate. Classmates.com told the world it would find your classmates, and sent emails to people telling them a lost friend was trying to get in touch. This was a lie. Classmates.com was sued for false advertising for almost $10million. When considering time has moved on since then and that we now live in the social media age, one lying advert and your business could die.

Test the chair before you tame the lion

You wouldn't become a lion tamer without testing a few different chairs out on a few different lions first. Likewise, in modern marketing everything can be tested...So there is no need to throw £100,000 behind a campaign and hope it works. You can show a select group various types of copy. You can run email tests and see what appeals to who and when. You can write articles to drive awareness, and measure what articles are the most popular. You can run campaigns on Twitter and Facebook, tweak the demographics and messaging and learn from your audience what they best respond to. You can do this for small amounts of money - figure out what you know is going to work, and then spend big.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Culture matters. Not the cultivation of bacteria and tissue cells in an artificial medium containing nutrients. People culture. Work culture. Human achievement regarded collectively culture. Culture sustains that first week enthusiasm for an entire career. If a business owner gets their culture right, the result is peace of mind.

Employees should look forward to going to their jobs. They should enjoy the challenges, their co-workers, and the atmosphere. Careers shouldn't provoke stress in employees. The working environment should not close down the mind, heart and spirit of a person.

While the work may be difficult, the culture should be designed to alleviate the work related stress: a window with a view will always be more powerful than a motivational cat poster pinned to a brick wall.

Business culture can be a Tyrannosaurus Rex that will eat morale alive and swallow your business whole in a single gulp. Or it can be the cement that glues hearts and minds together, so they work with you forever.

Here's a few tips on how to avoid T-Rex culture:

Avoid square peg in round hole syndrome

The US Government didn't employ J. Robert Oppenheimer to head up the Manhattan Project, then insist he spend his time in the cutlery department trying to create a spork. They put him where he best fit, then let him go to work. OK, so his work murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people - but that was what he had been employed to do.

Feed, water and leave your people in light

Humans are not designed to sit at a computer all day hitting buttons with letters on. A human with no plan is a lion without eyes or teeth, sent into a ballpit with violent children: full of frustration, with nowhere to release it. In the beginning the lion hates himself. But after a while, he hates the ballpit. In short, if you keep an employee in the dark and let them think that they can't grow in the company, if a person thinks that what they are doing today is what they will be doing for the rest of their life...Eventually they will hate your company. They might even stay working for you while hating you - which is the mentality at the heart of all customer complaints.

Just say no to motivational cat posters

Don't take the piss out of your employees intelligence by insulting them with fluffy kittens playing with balls of elastic, with embarrassing out of date wisdom from the 80's. Just. Don't.

Do not micromanage

You created the business from scratch, but if you aren't prepared to let your people do what they can, then your business is never going to grow beyond your own limitations. A business that is micromanaged is the extension of one mind. This is the DNA of a small business. A business led by a visionary who empowers his staff to become autonomous becomes the extension of many minds. This is the DNA of an empire.

Beards are good

Don't tell your employees how to dress or look. Just because you think suits should be worn, and ties and suits and polished shoes are a must, doesn't mean they should be. Some owners run their business like the military and think this is good. NEWSFLASH: The military is an organised group of people who unfortunately sell their soul to the devil for a lie. It's really nothing to emulate.

Don't be a fuckwit

Well done, you created a business. You are making money. This doesn't make you a genius. Remember that your employees might not have your business head, but Mark in booth 10 once scored a goal from the half way line, and Margaret in booth 3 can fly a plane. You are the magnet that has attracted these people, but you are not the main attraction in their lives. So don't get above your station. A real leader lets others lead. Don't be a fuckwit.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]