Marketing tactics come and go, but there is one tactic that always seems to pay off – commitment.

Small business marketers always want to chase the next new thing and so their core message and marketing approach flails around so thoroughly that the market can never even hear it let alone come to trust it.

Find something, anything that gives you some glimmer of a hope of marketing success and then stick with it. I’ve been on a bit of a mission of late, asking small business owners to answer this one question: “What’s the single most effective marketing tactic you have employed?”

My friend Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited had this to say: “We stopped advertising. We stopped all forms of direct advertising. Direct mail, cold-calling, Pay Per-Click on search engines, spam (I mean email), newsletter sponsorships, display ads. We stopped them all.

We focused on inspiring our employees and contractors; Then we focused on offering “more than a conference call” to our customers.

By focusing on our employees we insured they would be inspired and enthusiastic with each interaction with our customers. We made their day fun, productive and inspiring;”

Now, to some this doesn’t sound like much of a marketing strategy, but the key is it has worked wonders for CCU. And the primary reason is that they committed to it. They sing it, they dance it, they meditate on it. . . and by gosh, guess what – people started to believe in it. People within the organization and eventually everyone who comes into contact with the organization.

I could cite dozens of examples of small business owners who have shown me that all they have done is put out their story and stuck to it.

It may not be that glamorous but few things build trust like consistency.