Ever since jumping into the world of marketing, my mind has acted like an early-stage hoarder: Slowly gathering little bits of insight here, some lessons from that project there, random thoughts after that thing with the guy in the place.

In a way, it’s like marketing has become a giant word cloud in my head.

Source: http://lexicacomm.net/about/consulting/

Yeah, some words stand out more than others, but they’re in piles, not groups. They’re random, not organized.

My Marketing One-Liner
As you may know, my marketing approach and philosophies didn’t come from a book or a conference, they came from trying and failing, building and experimenting, making mistakes many more times than I found success.

And after a decade of life in this digital sandbox, this is the best I can describe my approach:

“Marketing is creativity based on principles, incrementally improved by data.”

I start with a simple, tried-and-true marketing principle, use creativity to apply it in an innovative way that fits the situation and goals, and then let data correct my course and spark new ideas to once again innovate and improve.

Distill the Rest
But of those three pieces – creativity, principles, and data – the principles are the most valuable to me. They’re the portable packets of knowledge that guide the creativity of each marketing problem I face.

When I have one to start from, I’ve done my best work.
When I haven’t, I’ve wasted a lot of time.

So, I’ve made myself a goal for 2015 to mark my 10th year in the field of internet marketing: I’m going to distill that massive, jumbled, bird’s nest of a word cloud down into bite-sized, organized, meaningful packets.

Every Other Friday
I’m calling this project my “Book of Principles” and I’ll write and release a new installment every other Friday until I run out.

Right now, I have 10 ideas sketched out, but that could easily turn into a dozen once i get in the thick of it. I’ll draw on past posts, past projects, past successes and past failures, all in the hope of finding the core concepts of web marketing that have helped me get to where I am.

Hopefully they’ll help you as well.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.