You Are Stealing From People By Not Marketing Your Work

First published on July 24, 2019

I've written before about the need to bust through our Resistance around Marketing, but it was great to get another wake-up call this week and it was this, from marketing guru Seth Godin: you are stealing from other people if you aren't marketing your work.

Wow, what a way to smack me round the face, Seth. I'm taking part in Godin's online course The Marketing Seminar at the moment, and for you to feel the truth of that statement you might need a few more of his ideas.

A good place to start might be this. There's an old marketing maxim that 'No one wants a 3/4 inch drill bit, they want a 3/4 inch hole.' But Godin takes it further in his latest book, This Is Marketing. Because you see people don't want a 3/4 inch hole, they want eight of them. Except they don't want eight holes, they want the shelf that they can put up if they drill eight holes. Except they don't want that: what they want is for their stuff to be on the shelf and not on the floor. Except they don't want that, they want a tidy room. Except they don't want that, they want the feeling they get when they walk in that room: that their life is in order, that they have things under control, that everything is organised and settled and good.

So don't market them a 3/4 inch drill bit, market them the feeling of their life being organised and settled and good.

This idea isn't obvious and it makes it easier to understand something else important. People who buy something believe they get more value from having it than from the money they pay for it. Otherwise, why would they swap their money for the thing? This gets interesting when you think about charitable giving, especially of large amounts. The question is: why would someone give thousands or even millions of pounds away? Well, that's the question of someone who has never felt what it's like to give away thousands or millions of pounds to a worthy cause. Philanthropists give money away because they get more for giving it away than they do for having it.

On a small scale, I've found this to be true as I upped my charitable giving in the last couple of years. It's not as much as I could give (almost no one in a country like the UK gives that) but it's way more than I've ever given before. And I feel better. That's the benefit I get. I feel like my worldview is tight, like I'm within integrity, like I'm doing something to contribute to the cause I feel is most important in the world in the most effective way I can with my money. (For me, it's extreme poverty, mainly in North Africa, via GiveDirectly.)

There's also a little corollary here about empathy: it's hard, as someone calling potential donors, to get them to give millions of pounds. Part of the reason it's extra hard is because most people don't understand why someone would give away millions of pounds. And that makes sense: most people have never had millions of pounds, let alone given them away. It really helps to develop deep empathy for your customers: then you can start to speak to the beliefs and parts of them that just might give you their money. Eagle-eyed readers will see that this transfers across industries: if you're a travel agent, book some holidays for yourself, find out what it's like. If you're a doctor, make sure you go to the doctor. If you're a coach, hire yourself a coach. Right now.

But wait, what does this have to do with stealing? Well, here's the thing. First, you need to trust that people buy from you because they get more value than they are paying, that their experience or product is worth more to them than the cash. And, a brief pause, let's give 'people' some credit here: let's not presume they're all manipulated by sleazy marketers or salespeople. Let's assume they're sensible, thoughtful people like you and I, doing the best they can to make the right decisions with their money and getting it right most of the time. (And let's remember that you and I aren't sleazy marketers - we're people doing good work which we believe will make the world better.) If people are getting more than they pay, then by selling to them you are actually giving them more than they had. That's the magic of trade, that we both end up better off (because, say, you value my book more than £8, and I value £8 more than a copy of my book).

If you don't market your work, you can't sell it. If you can't sell it, people can't buy it. If they can't buy it, they can't be better off by having it. So they are worse off. Not everyone, of course, is worse off if you don't market your work... but those few people who really want what you have. They are. And those people, those are the ones who matter the most.

So stop stealing, and start talking about your work.