Connection, Conversation, Community.

 

Stuck on your marketing? Try this.

Sometimes even the mention of the word marketing is enough to make people shut up shop and shut down any and every chance of creativity.

Believe it or not I totally get this – I can sometimes struggle myself with my own marketing. Tell me do you recognise any of these very unhelpful thought patterns?

• It’s all been said or written about before.
• I Can’t keep saying the same thing people are going to get sick of me.
• No matter how I do it, it wont be as good as so and so.
• Why would anyone listen to me when they could listen to her?
• What if they don’t understand what I’m trying to say?
• I’ll just wait a while to talk about that / launch that / do that because someone else has juts done something similar.

The list goes on and I bet you could add some of your own here right now.

When we think this, when this is the self-dialogue going on in our head, we take ourselves into a place of being completely stuck. But the biggest factor here is exactly what I have said – we take ourselves there. No one else does; we have no one else to blame for this. That’s why I want you to change that self- talk and try to be more open hearted, more thoughtful and more kind – to yourself!

You are doing what you are doing for a reason. You know what that is, and it doesn’t have to be anything profound or dramatic it is just that thing you know deep down inside you have a huge amount to offer doing.  Right?

Remember that no one can express things that way you can – they can’t write like you, they can’t speak like you, they can’t record video like you.

Plus, no one else has the identical experience, qualifications, intelligence, thought and personality that you do so there is NO WAY it’s been said the way you will say it before! (Take a breath sorry long sentence but I had to get it out – picture that sentences as an impassioned plea from me to you!)

Now, if you are stuck with your marketing try this approach instead.

Remember what marketing and communications in your business is supposed to be about. Let’s call it the three C’s:

Connection

Our intention when building a business is to create a genuine connection with those people that we consider to be our ideal, dream client or customer. Thinking about them, thinking about what you have / do, thinking about what it is you are going to improve in their lives. What can you talk about that will make them stop and think “Hang on – she knows how I feel, she can see what I’m going through, she knows what I’m talking about – finally someone who seems to understand.” And write about that.

Conversation

Now remember, traditional marketing was always meant to be about first of all discovering what people needed and then creating the solution for them. To know this, we first would have to talk to those people (research – yes!) and then be mindful about creating something for them that provided the solution AND then letting them know we had the answer for them. And once it was out there actually taking on board feedback and adapting and evolving until that thing was perfect for that person – really a conversation – two-way communication.

As some stage, I must admit, marketers got it all arse about – in fact, frankly, many still do. They started to think it was all about creating new products, not based on an actual understanding of what people want, and then telling people “we have this and you need it now”. That’s one-way communication. That’s not a conversation, that’s just telling – hello mass marketing. People became wise to this after a while and mass marketing has all but completely lost its effectiveness.

Now, we are in the best position to be building a business and a brand where technology, especially through social media right now, affords us the luxury of an ongoing conversation – two-way communication.

So when you sit down to write that next blog post just think of it as starting a conversation with your dream client. You are not telling, you are sharing information and you are genuinely interested in starting a conversation with them. You want them to tell you what they think. Of course there is a chance that this may not happen and that is totally fine. It doesn’t matter – it’s not about you or making you feel better, its about sharing, and connecting.

Community

So why do we do all this? Because to build a business or a brand we need to build a community, or a tribe, of people who share some common need, want, wish or mind-set. Our intention with our marketing is build a community of people who we service and who will hopefully one day become one of our dream clients so, yes, we can build a sustainable business. But even of they never actually cross the line to making a purchase for whatever reason, they can still be out supporters, they can still be brand advocates for us so they are still a very important part of the mix. Don’t worry about whether or not they are very going to buy something from you, just think about creating a community where they feel understood, supported and by you. What happens after that is up to them. Because we all need to remember, there is not a 4th C in this picture – control is never, ever part of our marketing mix.