This week I got an amazing email from one of my dear Big Shift Coaching program clients who said that she loves the way I talk about marketing. She said that I made it sound so simple and intuitive so that she can immediately ‘get it’.
With that email emerged a desire in me to share with you how I went from being the poster child of marketing resistance to being a huge fan of marketing.
That change in attitude has helped me create a very successful business and made marketing feel easy for me.
And since that’s exactly what I want for you, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.
First of all, even though I love marketing, I never think about it as marketing.
This is how I do think about it:
- How do I get to know the people I am meant to serve in a deep and intimate way?
- What is it I can do to help them, in a way that I am going to enjoy and that will make a difference to them?
- How do I verbalize it in a way that’s simple for my clients to understand?
Marketing is not ‘How do I get people to hire me or buy my stuff?’ Marketing is the ultimate act of service, where I get to teach, inspire and share who I am with the world.
What if you knew that you could freely give to as many people as possible because you knew that some of those people are going to be more than happy to hire you.
Now your job becomes two-fold, figure out what cool things you can share with people, and find more and more people to share it with.
Here are some ideas where you could start:
- Brainstorm 10-20 things you can do to help your clients and potential clients get the results they need
- Take your favorite of those ideas and turn it into a gift to your potential client, this could be an ebook, a blog post, a webinar, a poem, a singing video, a game, a manifesto.. (let your imagination run wild)
- Give that gift out freely to as many people as possible
- Make sure you make it easy for the recipients of those free gifts to contact and to hire you
Marketing can be that simple and all it requires of you is a desire to serve and a propensity to want to give freely of your gifts and talents.
How will you approach marketing today?
Let me know by leaving a comment below.
Warmly,
~Bill
I appreciate this dialogue, especially the heart and soul in Bill’s original message. Marketing is HUGE. It is an elusive term, means many things to many people. Ultimately, it’s about messaging. Traditionally, marketing is the 4 P’s (product, price, place, promotion) – In Bill’s vernacular, we add a 5th P: Personality. 🙂 Bill suggests that conscious (or relationship) marketing is about leading with relatedness (personality) , quickly followed with being of service (product) at a price (free) they will enjoy. Distribute these first 3 P’s as broadly as possible (all over the place!) and wham! You have done the best possible job of promotion. I like to keep things simple, and this is simply beautiful. We all MUST have effective, valuable products/services that help people, beyond our freebies.
Conscious marketing is about “What problem do you have and how may I solve it?” If you look at your target audience as ATM Machines, you’ll strike out. People aren’t stupid. Most of them can tell when someone is being genuine, or not. It takes a ‘shift’ in your attitude and perception to come from a place of helpfulness versus a place of “dollar” signs. Yes, everyone wants their business to succeed, but if you go about it from an inauthentic manner, it may never prosper and thrive.
Thank you for those thoughts – really helpful.
Hassan,
Bill touched on the balance of giving and receiving in his point #4: Make sure you make it easy for the recipients of those free gifts to contact and to hire you. I love to include a line that says something like: “If this has sparked something for you, here are some natural next steps.” I almost always offer YET ANOTHER gift and also introduce them to a product and/or my coaching if they are ready to go deeper.
The other piece of “a plan to get” that you asked about: there is already a natural, give and receive plan in place, the natural balance that we as mere mortals do not constantly have to manage.
Bill,
Thank you for a clear, simple and powerful message. It feels true and clean. I, too, find marketing to be an amazing opportunity to deeply connect with lots of people, some of whom then become my clients because of that connection. I smiled at how you said you don’t think of it as marketing. I don’t either. And, I would love to come up with a better way to describe it, but haven’t yet. Oh well, not really a problem.
Here’s to giving a whole lot of love and having it come back to use heaped up and pouring over . . .
Bill,
This is just what I needed right now! So glad to know you had a challenge with marketing too.
Thanks,
Les Schmidt
Awesome Bill! Thanks for the pep talk. Needed that today.
Bill,
I am a bit lost here with your “definition” of marketing. To me that sounds more like philanthropy.
Marketing, I believe, must have an element of give and take. A good marketeer should not be greedy, but always aims for a win-win exchange. And those who excel in marketing are those who give more (value wise) than what they get.
I believe as much as you “give freely of your gifts and talents”, you must have a plan for others(recipients) to give you as well.
If we are just going to give, without a plan of how to get, then how can we survive?
The Gift aspect is the part that really rings true for me. 99% of the “newsletters” I get are actually sales flyers. At the least, there’s always some “buy my product” language involved.
How will I approach marketing today? I will stay Congruent in word and deed, and my newsletter/podcast will not only be given freely, but given free of sales pitches as well. Sales can live in a separate communication, not disguised as something else. Conscious marketing has to be beyond using words and messages that people want to hear, just to b.s. them into buying my product/services.
Using The Force for personal gain is being a Sith, using it for the good of all is the Jedi way. LOL!