Do you hate marketing?

Because marketing doesn’t hate you. It’s come up a couple of times recently with clients that they say they hate marketing. A lot of creators do. The idea of marketing they have in mind is some sort of system that turns you into someone who tricks people into spending money they don’t have by buying something they don’t need.

But if you’re reading this, that’s not you! That’s not you at all.

You didn’t create something that people don’t need. You didn’t create something gross. You’re not offering something awful.

You’re not going to need to use stupid tricks to get people to buy things!  This makes me think of a client that I worked who had this mindset. We had to do some mental work, some re-framing of her attitude toward herself, her product and her customers. Marketing is simply the way we deliver messages to the people that need to hear them.

You’re not in the business of taking money away from people, and what you’re offering is not useless or unimportant. It is a beacon of hope and a path toward a better future for the people who need it. It’s a path to being more financially secure, or to have more love in your life or a healthier relationship with food.

It changes something profound with your internal dialogue when you change from an attitude of, ”Don’t show this to people!” and instead think, “Gosh, I can’t keep this from people who need the help.” Because you know it’s good.

If somebody else had made it, you would be happy to share it with people.

That’s the kind of mindset shift you need to have if the word marketing makes you feel icky. If it makes you feel that way then you have likely been at the receiving end of some very bad marketing.

For a lot of people marketing feels like shouting into a crowded room, kind of like Twitter, where it feels like everybody’s shouting and nobody is really having a conversation. If you’re thinking that you’re going to have to go into a train station and start shouting your offer, you’re going to have a strong aversion to marketing.

Instead, think of it as transportation. Depending on the user and their destination the transportation mode is different, but every user needs some sort of transportation to get from where they are, to where they want to go.

Your offer can take them where they want to go, but how will they know?

Marketing is the vehicle that takes them. It is the intersection of your message and your audience. There is a famous quote I’ll paraphrase by Peter Drucker, that the very best marketing does its job so completely that the sales process becomes irrelevant.

It’s a shift in your mindset.

On that note, asking your colleagues or your friends to share your offer with their Facebook network is not a marketing strategy. You need to have quite a bit more than that which we’ll cover soon.

If you are ready for a more in-depth marketing strategy, book a call with me so we can start figuring out the direction you should go!