Marketing Has Nothing to Do With You
Marketing expert Seth Godin would agree that the old ways of marketers have no place within the new age where online marketing dominates. Marketing is not advertising.
The “Mad Men” days of spending money on ads to make more money are over. It’s not about flaunting your brand, your logo, or even your product. It’s not about showing off what you do or what you sell onto people. It actually has noting to do with you at all. Then who is it about? Marketing is all about your audience. It’s about the people.
1) Marketing has to do with trust.
Never before has transparency and trust been so important. You must focus on winning people’s trust by providing helpful information that will benefit them (not you). Companies are working harder than ever to become completely transparent with their current and prospective customers by providing stats and creating behind the scene videos of how they do what they do. Gain the trust of your customers first with information and content, then you have put yourself in a position to offer something for sale to your audience.
2) Marketing has to do with emotion.
When you are telling others about your product, service, or company, you need to spark some sort of emotion within your audience. This can include happiness if they buy your product or fear of what they will miss out on if they don’t buy your product. But the message isn’t to be that blunt. Look at Apple’s previous holiday commercial for the iPhone. It didn’t talk about specs, or colours, or the company or anything like that. It just showed a family getaway and a kid who had an iPhone and was able to create a touching family movie with the device for everyone to watch. This creates the emotion of happiness and comfort helping people make a human connection with the product. This is extremely effective and why many companies are telling stories rather than blasting sales pitches.
3) Marketing has to do with sharing.
Social media and marketing nowadays seem to go hand in hand because of the significant impact “sharing” has had on marketing, specifically social media sharing. Companies and brands are working harder than ever on creating content and media that people will feel the need to share with their friends and family. This is where the first two points I mentioned are important. If your message can’t be trusted or isn’t considered real, or if people aren’t able to emotionally relate to your message, it becomes unlikely anyone will share it online. Take care of the first two and this third point will become easier to achieve.
Just remember, marketing is not advertising.