Marketing Is NOT What You Think It Is

There is a very good reason that many of my conversations with small businesses about marketing begin with them saying something like:

"But I don't want to cram my stuff down people's throats."

And I immediately think to myself, "Where in the world did they get this idea?"

Well, they got it from experience. And the dictionary - [n]. the action or business of promoting and selling products or services.

From an archaic, long-gone, hyper-masculine way of doing business that depended upon goals like persuasion and convincing. 

In the minds of many, marketing means Selling people shit they don't need.

But that's not why YOU are in business. If it were, you'd be OUT of business. Whoa... You STILL need to need to be marketing. 

It's just not what you think it is!

Oh My GOODNESS! In a 21st century, digital marketing world, we have simply GOT to let this tired old perception of marketing go to the grave that's been impatiently waiting for it.

It applied to the Yellow Pages (RIP). It applied to a limited Internet. It does NOT apply to a world where we can search for and FIND anything we want.

Today, Marketing means putting enough of yourself online so that when YOUR people find you, they recognize what they're looking for when they see it. 

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I could do an internet search for a trash-talking chef who makes disgusting recipes for heart attacks that will make me giggle on a daily basis. And the internet would FIND him for me. (<< Don't click on that link unless you really want to see some bacon-fried-crazy!)

UNLESS he neglected to glaringly put any of these things in his profile. If he pulled back, or put the damper on himself I'm sure his mother would prefer, he would disappear into the food network-dominated noise.

You see where I'm going with this? 

Let me give you an example. In speaking with a new client the other day to set up an insanely creative social media plan, I learned she has a beautiful line of grown-up coloring books / journals on Amazon.com.

I am WAY into grownup coloring books AND journaling. It's about the only thing I do when I'm not working - and here they are TOGETHER in one book? From a person I'd been talking to and following for months?!. And I had NO IDEA.

Why? Because the author didn't like the idea of "marketing." 

Well, okay, then. LET'S CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE. 

Call it "Shining Your Light." Call it "Helping People Find You." Call it, as my good friend Lana Shlafer (and Oprah, too, by the way) does, "Being Delightfully Full of Yourself." 

Really, call it anything you want - as long as you DO it. Because if you're not shining bright enough for your people to SEE you online, they CAN'T see you.

Being excited about what you do WELL is not "cramming your stuff down people's throats." But being SILENT about what you do well is LITERALLY the opposite ....

You're standing in FRONT of your stuff. YOU then become the biggest roadblock between your customers and your products.

Some parting reminders every time you feel like you're being TOO MUCH:

• 1-2% of your Facebook Page followers saw that product post you made 2 weeks ago.
• Nobody remembers that you have a member discount if you haven't told them lately.
• Several of your email subscribers may NOW need the service you launched 6 months ago but haven't mentioned since.

Got it? Do your thing, my friends. And let the followers unfollow. Let the subscribers unsubscribe. 

Because it's YOUR job - not your customer's, not Facebook's, not Google's - to let your people know they're in the right place for them, or not.

*Put It In Action: Do one thing this week to unabashedly remind the world why YOU are here and not working for Starbucks.

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