The Marketing Trap I Most Often Fall Into
First published on November 16, 2018
I tell myself so many funny stories about marketing. Often, the way I try and catch myself is to come back to a story I learned from my brother in one of his brilliant pieces of writing about marketing. The story goes something like this:
You think that only snake-oil salesmen and sleazy internet marketers use internet marketing strategies. So you don't do them. Because you're too good, and pure, and you're not one of those evil, sleazy bastards. Maybe you even sit, sometimes, looking across a room at someone you're pretty sure is using those techniques right now on some poor, unsuspecting person. And the person is taken in by it, and ends up working with the snake-oil salesman.
In coaching, I have this feeling about all the adverts I get on Facebook promising to turn my business into a six-/seven-/one-million-figure business in just six easy steps.
But here's the problem. Who are you serving with your high-and-mighty-ness? With your 'I won't use any marketing techniques because I'm too good and pure'? With your 'real success doesn't come from tricking people into working with you.'
Are you serving yourself? No. You are letting yourself down. Because those techniques can be powerful, and lots of poor unsuspecting people are buying from a snake-oil salesman who then won't even deliver value to them, not like you would if they even knew about you. Which they don't, because you refuse to use the techniques.
Are you serving the person buying? God no, you are letting them down. Instead of doing some incredibly useful and powerful work with you, they are buying some crappy six-part tool from someone else which isn't even going to help them.
Are you serving the snake-oil salesman? No, you are letting him down, too. Because while he gets away with running a crappy business based on snake-oil promises, he doesn't have to learn, or grow, or change, or become the person he could be.
So, I remind myself, and I remind you: serve people. Do what serves people most, even if that is doing 'marketing' or 'sales', which you think is horrible or icky. Remember Rule Number 6 (don't take yourself so god damn seriously!) and get on with it.
I have been remembering this story and trying to remind myself of this all week. I got offered $100 of free advertising credit from LinkedIn. I like free stuff, and I like playing with technology. And, I've recently relaunched my group programme for coaches, which I'm going to run for the second time in 2019. I first built a following of coaches after an article about my journey to being a full-time coach went mini-viral (it's been read over 7,000 times), and I thought - well, I could put that $100 on that article, and see what happens, and maybe get it out to some more people. And then I created the advert. And then I sat on it.
The Resistance was funny this time. It was mainly "But it got to 7,470 views on its own. It got there organically. Do I want to spoil that by advertising it?"
Wow, remember Rule Number 6, dude.
And then, remember that there's a reason that 7,470 people have clicked on it, and you've connected with hundreds of coaches in different ways through it. Because it's good, because it served people. Remember Rule Number 6, and get on with it. How dare I let my bizarre worries about 'purity' get in the way of getting an article which has inspired many in front of even one more person?
The advert will go live on Monday.
I learnt something else this week - apparently if you like your own LinkedIn posts a few days after you share them, they sometimes get 1/3 more views. 'But I can't do that, it's sad.' Oh, dude. Remember Rule Number 6. Who might you not be serving because someone might think 'it looks sad'? Get over yourself and like some posts.
This all applies to you, too. Remember Rule Number 6, get on with it, and get your work out there. How dare you not do it?